


baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me (no more)

by thegoldenrin



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Alpha Jack Dalton, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump, F/F, F/M, In self-defense, Intersex Male Omegas, Jack is on the Kovacs mission, M/M, Mac does some Murder, Mac needs to talk to people, Medical Mumbo Jumbo I mostly googled and invented, Mpreg, Omega Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Panic Attacks, Running Away, SPOILERS AFTER THIS - Freeform, Samantha Cage Being A Good Bro, Scared Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Season/Series 03, Worried Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), he really gets it in this one, look it's omegaverse I can do what I want, worried team
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:22:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28129836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoldenrin/pseuds/thegoldenrin
Summary: Mac loves Jack. Jack leaves on the Kovacs mission. Mac spirals.Things get complicated.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Desiree "Desi" Nguyen, Jack Dalton & Matilda "Matty" Webber (MacGyver TV 2016), Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) & Riley Davis, Jack Dalton/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Riley Davis/Desiree "Desi" Nguyen, Samantha Cage & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Wilt Bozer & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Wilt Bozer/Leanna Martin
Comments: 54
Kudos: 97





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintsurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/gifts).



> heyhey this is going to be very angsty and get a lot worse before it gets better! I have around three chapters of this written out for now, dunno how fast or regularly updates will come - but the bee is in my bonnet and it ain't leaving soon. There is also a much more wholesome version of this story in the works, admittedly with far more content, but that is part of a series and I need to publish the other pieces first for it to make sense.  
> so for now you get this angst fest - and cause I don't want to spoil anything else, enjoy :)
> 
> angst and Mac whump???? ofc this is for u kel, hugs n kissies  
> find me on Tumblr @azurelacrima I promise I don't bite

Angus MacGyver is what one might call a morning person. On most days, at least.  
  
Leaning back on his heels from his previously bent over position in front of the toilet at five in the morning, though, has even him feeling distinctly grumpy instead of his usual chipper up-and-at-‘em self, as J-  
  
 _No. Not going there._   
  
Drawing a shaky hand across his lips clamped tightly shut, Mac takes in the roiling in his stomach, still present but eased enough that he feels safe to flush the toilet and drag himself into a standing position. It’s the second time this night already, and probably not the last, judging by the past three weeks and counting. Even Desi has started giving him odd looks, although it’s only become noticeable to others around four days ago.   
  
He chances a quick brush with just the slightest amount of toothpaste, wary of setting off a new round of vomiting all over again. At this point there’s not even any bile left, mostly just dry heaving, which is uncomfortable enough on its own.   
  
He pads out into the living room silently, sinking into the cushions of the couch as gingerly as he can, afraid that any wrong move will set off the nausea again. He wants to lay his head back and doze, stare up at the wall while he lets his thoughts run, but the sharp ache in his throat protests against every miniscule movement, along with the acid reflux pushing against his esophagus. God, but he _hates_ this with a passion – sometimes Mac can’t help but feel the world is punishing him for something by making every day of the past two months as miserable as cosmically possible.   
  
The fact that he doesn’t even notice Bozer until his best friend is standing right in front of him, worried eyes and a glass of water in his hands is a testament to just how exhausted Mac is. Suddenly there’s a cool hand pressing against his sweat-slick temple, and he almost flinches away from it before the familiar presence registers and he lets himself press into it with a quiet sigh that just barely skirts the edge of a moan. God, he feels pathetic.   
  
“Hey man, you don’t look so hot”, Bozer mumbles, and Mac blinks his eyes open sluggishly. Everything seems fever-hazy around him, although that might just be the sun starting to rise. Dusk casts everything in a slightly surreal light. “Want some water?”  
  
Nodding soundlessly, Mac raises an unsteady hand to take the cool liquid from his best friend’s hand, curling his other arm around his bent legs even tighter to compensate for the sudden lack of warmth on his right side, and takes the slightest sip. It’s really more of a kitten-lick than anything, but it trickles down his parched, raw throat like a line of soothing fire all the same, settling in his empty stomach with an edge of discomfort. Slow and steady is the game-plan, as he’s had to learn the hard way.   
  
Bozer waits for him to lower the almost full glass down into his lap before continuing to speak, and Mac has to fix his eyes on the floor to keep himself under control. He feels overwrought and stretched thin, and he knows if he looks into those kind brown eyes right now, he’ll break apart at the seams. And no one can afford that right now, especially not Mac.   
  
“You know, I can call in with Matty and tell her you’re sick. She’ll let you take a sick day every once in a while, Mac.” His tone is gentle with that slight edge of admonishment, reminding Mac that Bozer’s by far the most intimately acquainted with his brand of self-care. Even back when they were still hapless seven-year-olds, his best friend was already nagging at him to take a nap every now and then. Nothing much has changed since, except for the severity of consequences for his thoughtless behavior.  
  
Mac suppresses the urge to sigh and arches his back, listening to the faint crackle of bones as he brings his shoulder blades together to stretch out his sore chest. “Nah, don’t worry Boze – I’m just a little off my game. Lab stuff’s perfectly fine.” He closes his eyes briefly, taking respite in the short moment of darkness and absence of everything around him.   
  
Bozer sighs lowly, and when Mac opens his eyes again his expression is one of familiar resignation. “Alright, whatever you say, man. But just so you know, the Phoenix will still be there even if you don’t come in for once.” Mac allows himself to grin at that, gathering all his leftover reserves of strength to stand back up again, slowly padding into the direction of his bedroom.   
  
“Sure, that’s what you think”, he calls back over his shoulder, steadfastly ignoring the ever-present stab of pain underneath his sternum.  
  
_Liar, liar.  
_

* * *

  
Mac and Bozer drive into the Phoenix separately that morning, owing to the fact that it’s Bozer and Leanna’s date night like every Friday off-mission and Mac is having coffee with his father later that afternoon. Ever since the car bomb in his Jeep, Oversight has been escorted to and from all of his appointments by disguised tac teams and is seldom seen without some sort of security detail. Instead he makes a point of spending time with his son after, still under heavy supervision. Mac almost wishes he wouldn’t.   
  
Lab research is slow-going today, but unlike usually he doesn’t yearn for the adrenaline of missions. Apart from the fact that he’d almost certainly get someone or all of them killed in this state, the mindless repetitive motions of filling out supply forms while waiting on his experiments allows Mac’s mind to wander, spinning through questions like _why_ and _how_ and _where do I go_. He knows he can’t keep going on like this, sooner or later something will give – probably him. But ever since Nigeria their team dynamic has been just slightly off-beat, and he can’t tamp down on the part inside him that looks at everyone with distrust. _They won’t forgive you for this. You’re one fuck-up away from losing everyone you care about. Not even Jack could bear you in the long run._  
  
They’re not new thoughts, exactly, except for that last one.   
  
He’s torn out of his head by the quiet _clink_ of a cup settling on the steel table next to his elbow, filled with a steaming liquid that smells distinctly of ginger and possibly fennel. Riley plops down into the seat next to him, for once not attached to her rig. “Thought you could do with something for that nasty stomach bug. Must’ve been one hell of an expired salmon, huh?”  
  
Hoping that the twitch on his face looks more like the smile he intends and less like the grimace it feels like, Mac takes hold of the mug and presses his cold fingers against it under Riley’s assessing gaze. Her casual demeanor is for his sake only, worry shining through just underneath clear as day.   
  
“Thanks, Riles, that’s very nice of you.” He takes a sip mostly to placate her worries, but quickly finds that it actually does help settle the roiling in his belly, as well as soothe the rawness in his throat just a little. Mac makes a quiet sound of surprise, smiling at his friend a little more genuinely. “That- that’s actually pretty good, thank you!”  
  
Riley smiles at him, leaning against the table sideways on her elbow. She’s wearing her usual work-attire of black leather jacket, ripped jeans and intimidating-looking heels that Mac thinks would be right at home in the high-fashion alt-scene of Hollywood. How she manages to pull off all her miracles on a semi-daily basis, be a badass international secret agent and still effortlessly looks better than all the rest of them combined he’s never been able to figure out, but it’s so very Riley that it makes a fond warmth spread in his chest. Mac himself has downgraded to increasingly baggy hoodies over the last few days, ditching even his usual flannel in favor of the most easily washable fabrics.   
  
“You’re welcome, Mac.” They sit in comfortable silence for a few moments while he sips at his tea, scribbling out the last set of numbers on the form in front of him before turning to give her his full attention.   
  
“You know, Desi’s worried about you”, she says suddenly, completely out of left field in a forcibly casual voice. Mac almost chokes on his tea but manages to reign in his surprise at the last moment, swallowing the not-quite-scalding liquid with poorly disguised difficulty. “Is that so?” His tone is audibly strangled, even to his own ears, with none of his former casualness. He couldn’t sound any more like a deer caught in headlights if he tried.   
  
“Yeah. We all are.” Riley doesn’t make it sound accusatory, from an objective perspective, but to Mac’s already frazzled mind it just opens the door to overthinking all over again. He knows he’s reading too much into this, there’s no way they could know-  
  
“Uh, I’m – sorry”, he says, a little lamely, scrambling for any one hint of his covert ops training. He’s a seasoned professional, for god’s sake, if he can bluff his way out of nuclear annihilation, surely this is a piece of cake. It’s Riley trying to start a conversation about his feelings, not impending global destruction.   
  
_At least there’s a manual for impending global destruction_ , he thinks sourly.   
  
Riley lets her smile drop, dark eyes roving over his face thoughtfully. “You don’t have to apologize, Mac”, she says softly, her left index finger stroking over her manicured thumbnail absentmindedly. It’s a nice burgundy color. “I just want you to know that we’re here for you when you’re not doing so well. In here”, she points to his stomach, prompting a sheepish smile, “or up there.” Her fingers’ touch against his heated temple is faint, gentle, but the gesture carries so much weight it very nearly succeeds in making his eyes burn. But maybe that’s just because it reminds him so much of-  
  
“Thanks, Riles”, he replies, consciously having to exude effort to keep his fingers from clenching around the ceramic mug’s handle. “I appreciate that. I promise I’m alright, though.”  
  
She holds his gaze for several long seconds, face drawn in worry and obvious disbelief. Of course, he isn’t fooling anyone, Mac isn’t so naïve as to think that. But he’s counting on them to drop it anyways, the way he knows people always do, except for one. Until Nigeria.   
  
“Okay. But you can talk to me about anything, anytime, you know that”, she eventually concedes, shifting on her seat until she has to turn her head to hold his gaze with a look of resignation. Her fingers tap out an unfamiliar rhythm against the table-top, and Mac almost wants to fool himself into hearing the chords of some classical rock masterpiece. _Not this time_ , Riley, he thinks, unable to give her more than a weak nod. He doesn’t even try to speak through the guilt.   
  
She lets her eyes bore into him for another few beats of silence before they drop to the tabletop. “You know, I think she’s about two steps away from calling Jack about it.” Tactically, it’s a well-chosen blow. A week ago, it might even have worked, but all it does now is raise Mac’s walls even further.   
  
His breath hitches ever so slightly, and this time he doesn’t catch the tightening of his fingers in time. Riley doesn’t give any indication she’s picked up on his tension, but she’s been in this game for too long not to, knows him too well.   
  
“That’s really not necessary”, he forces out, voice every bit as strained as he feels. How ironic, that Desi can even debate whether to call Jack about an issue or not, when Mac remembers the list of outgoing calls on his phone with painful clarity. At least three each day for two weeks now, slowly dwindling down to one per day. All unanswered. All to the same number. A doctor’s vi-  
  
“He doesn’t need to worry about something trivial like that.” He can’t even bring himself to pronounce Jack’s name out loud, fiddling nervously with the teabag’s string hanging over the rim of the slowly cooling cup. This time, Riley’s eyes follow the motion of his fingers before she looks back up at him with a frown.   
  
“Mac, you’re not trivial. He cares about your safety.” _Not enough to stay_ , Mac thinks bitterly, forcing the muscles in his face to relax outwardly. Those aren’t the kinds of thoughts he wants others to pick up on, especially not Riley, who’s lost just as much as him in this. Jack was, after all, the central father figure of her life.   
  
“Yeah, but – I don’t want him distracted, you know? And I’ve dealt with worse than a stomach bug. It’s not worth getting him worked up over.” _It’s not like I haven’t tried_ , he adds silently.   
  
Riley leans back in her seat, folding her arms in front of her body. “Maybe you’re right, but I think he’d want to know anyways.” _Oh, if only you knew_. “Plus, Jack’s a big boy. _My first rodeo this ain’t, young padawan_.” It actually draws a little snort of laughter from him, her terrible impression of Texan-Yoda that sounds eerily like Jack’s. The comically low grumble of her voice sets off a painful pang of want in his chest, and at this point it’s almost muscle memory to tamp down on the tears. “Hah, I’m gonna tell him you said that.” She grins at him unapologetically, sticking her chin out in challenge.   
  
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it to his face any day.” But she drops the teasing tone again after that, sobering up almost immediately. “Do you think he’s okay, wherever he is?”  
  
Mac almost wants to flinch, turning his head away from her face so she can’t see the tears pooling in his eyes. His voice is rough when he speaks, with a confidence he doesn’t quite manage to feel for himself. “O’ course, he’s Jack. There’s nothing that could stop him, not really. He’ll be fine, and he’ll come back to us when he’s finally caught Kovacs.” He trips over the word us a little, hoping she won’t notice.   
  
Mac stands up from his seat with a squeak, looking around the room as if in a hurry in order to surreptitiously blink away the tears. “Ah- well, I- I should finish those experiments, I need to go meet my dad in like an hour and it’s a twenty-minute drive at least, sorry Riles.”   
  
“Hey, no worries, I’ll get out of your hair”, she reassures, getting up from her chair and turning towards the door. “I’ve got a boxing date with Desi to get to, wish me luck.” With one last squeeze to his arm and a sad little smile Mac valiantly does his best to ignore, Riley is back out the door, leaving him puttering about the lab on his own.   
  


* * *

  
Mac almost tells her before she vanishes into the corridor. He almost tells Bozer that morning. He comes close with his father that afternoon, but ultimately catches himself when he sees how exhausted the man looks. They talk about missions and treatments and expired salmon, how Desi fits in their team, and Mac adamantly manages to avoid the Jack-shaped hole that looms over all of his interactions with the others for once. He tries to tell Jack multiple times.   
  
All throughout he can feel the clock looming over him, casting an ever-growing shadow with each inch the hand crawls forward, an unsettling rhythm of _tick-tick-tick_ in the back of his mind. The diagnosis sits in an envelope in his bed, hidden in a secret compartment of the headboard; it’s a trick straight out of a bad spy movie, but works for this. Mac knows he can’t ignore this for much longer, that time is running out and he needs to act, preferably soon. Dully, he wonders when that sentiment changed from _decide_ to _act_ , as if his decision has already been made. (It has.)  
  
The point being, Mac comes so incredibly close to gathering all his courage, shoving away all his fears and apprehensions and just telling someone, Jack be damned. Surely even he wouldn’t ignore a call from Matty or Oversight, and if anything warrants one, it’s this. Then Charlie happens. Mason happens.   
  
Mac is forced to watch one of his oldest and best friends fall to his death because he wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, because he wasn’t good enough. Elliot Mason has killed an innocent man, all because of his grudge against James MacGyver, all because his son took all of his remaining humanity with him into the grave.   
  
And he gassed Mac, with a non-lethal substance that could’ve had so much more serious consequences for someone in his state. The horror of the day’s events linger just out of his reach, building up in that dark corner of his mind, but for now he can’t get past the immediate panic of _having been gassed and attacked_ , sitting shaking and crying on an examination chair in a hospital room to wait for his assigned doctor. No field-injury has ever rattled him this much, had him trembling to his core, except maybe for his chest-wound in Como. But Mac spent most of the touch-and-go part of that either unconscious or floating in an altered state of mind, whereas here, he doesn’t get that luxury. He almost wishes for the momentary relief of having one of his friends there for support, but he knows it would be only that; momentary. Knowledge of his situation would complicate just about everything else, and Mac can’t take that chance.   
  
He tries once more, while he’s still waiting for the doctor to enter, draws his phone out of his jacket and dials Jack’s number with shaky fingers. Over the past few days, his hope that Jack will pick up has slowly dwindled. He feels a little smaller every time his calls go unanswered, shrinks in on himself a little more until it’s become almost routine to try once each day. He presses the end button at the first hint of Jack’s voice telling him to leave a message every day and moves on, like everything around him does. But today, Mac feels oddly vulnerable, feels as hopeful and desperate as he did on that first day more than three weeks ago, when he’d called Jack still on the hospital’s front steps, emotions churning away with the monumental secret inside of him.   
  
This feels pivotal, heartbeat jumping into his throat in sync with every ring of the phone pressed against Mac’s ear. Jack won’t abandon him. He won’t. He promised to be there for Mac when needed, that this mission wouldn’t tear them apart, he kissed it into the omega’s heated skin the night before he-  
  
Jack’s voice fills the other end of the line, and for a moment Mac’s breath comes to a screeching halt, pure _relief_ -  
  
 _“Howdy-ho, this is Jack Dalton’s temporary pipeline for all Phoenix personnel while I’m on my sabbatical. Leave your thoughts for Uncle Jackie after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, cross my heart and hope to die. Adios till then.” Beep._  
  
It feels almost like an out-of-body experience, how forcefully the wave of grief and devastation sweeps him up. Mac just sits there, staring into the bleak hospital room, the ultrasound machine next to his chair, and breathes into the phone. Silent tears run down his face, and it feels like every single one of his fears has been confirmed. Jack doesn’t want him, won’t pick up even in the worst moment of Mac’s life, when he’s sitting alone and scared waiting to find out if he’s lost the most important thing he could possibly have to a madman on a revenge-driven vendetta against his father. Jack doesn’t want his children.   
  
Mac ends the call after a full minute, slides his phone back into the brown leather jacket that does nothing to protect his body from the shivers wracking through it, and cries. It feels oddly final, and with a sense of foreboding he knows what he needs to do. Mac came to a conclusion weeks ago already, possibly as soon as he’d found out he was pregnant, it’d just taken him some time to fully come to terms with it.   
  
Abortion is out of the question. If being gassed hasn’t harmed his babies already, he’ll keep them. Staying at the Phoenix isn’t an option either, too many variables playing into it. Mason, for one, who won’t stop at anything to destroy James MacGyver, including Mac and his unborn children. The Phoenix has been infiltrated once already, and it could happen again.   
  
He can’t rely on anyone outside himself either, not someone in his immediate circle anyways. Most of his relationships are on the rocks as it is, and this would throw a wrench into an already fragile system. Bozer would be supportive and accepting, and Leanna would follow his lead, maybe even Matty could get over her disappointment of his permanent inability for field work in light of the news. But everyone else…  
  
What would his father say? Would he be disappointed in his slip up? Would he leave again because of all the trouble Mac’s caused? Would Desi scoff and finally know she was right all along? Would Riley look at him with different eyes, resent him for destroying any last hope of a happy family with Jack and Diane?  
  
He can’t count on Jack to have his back, not this time. It hurts like hell, but Mac needs to face the facts. They’d slept together only once the night before the alpha left on his mission to hunt Kovacs, resulting in this exact situation. While Jack did say he loved him, touched and kissed and held him like he’d been starving, it could just as well have been the actions of a desperate man wanting one last taste of pleasure before leaving all of it behind for blood and death and pain. Even if he did love Mac, that’s no guarantee the willingness for a relationship would extend to a willingness to raise _twins_ with him, and Mac already knows they’re a package deal. No, there’s only one option left, as horrifying as the mere thought is. Mac is on his own.   
  
_You’re spiraling because you’re terrified and refusing to tell anyone_ , a quiet voice whispers in the back of his head. _None of them would hate you, the fear and gravity of the situation is just overshadowing your ability to think clearly and logically. All you need to do is ask for help. Jack deserves to know._  
  
 _Jack doesn’t want to know_ , Mac shoots back, head snapping up as the door cracks open to reveal a kindly-looking middle-aged man in a white coat rushing through. _He’s made his feelings abundantly clear, and I’ve made my own decision._  
  
He doesn’t try to call again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not a lot of Mac in this one, but we get to see some of that sweet Bozer action. don't worry, things will get very interesting for our favourite secret agent real soon :) or maybe worry, cause interesting in this case sure isn't good for him.  
> every comment gives me happy tears so feel free to keyboard-smash away!  
> and thanks to kel for telling me about the risks of dying your hair during pregnancy, ur a real one! 
> 
> wee content tw: some of the characters hint at considering that Mac may have committed suicide. if you want to skip that, it's the bit where Bozer and Leanna are in the house together and the first three-ish lines of the first paragraph under the next cut.

Bozer’s best friend vanishes into thin air six days after Charlie Robinson dies, not even an hour after his funeral. While he’d worked in New York, most of Charlie’s family were native to Los Angeles, and he’s buried in the same cemetery as Jack Dalton Sr.   
  
Only Bozer and Riley come with Mac that day, for emotional support and because they’d known him longer than the others, could maybe even tentatively call themselves his friends. It’s horrible even for them, seeing his parents and brother breaking into pieces, his closest friends weeping uncontrollably, his girlfriend hunched in on herself and shaking like a leaf in the wind. Mac’s face twisted up into a grimace of pain and loss, tears running steadily and silently down his cheeks.   
  
When all is said and done, the flag-covered coffin lowered into its final resting place, and everyone but Charlie’s immediate family have filtered out slowly, Mac stops at the edge of the cemetery, still crying. Bozer wants to hug him but is unsure how welcome the contact would be right then. Mac is a little inconsistent with things like that. (Later, he’ll kick himself for it even as the years have passed, wondering if he could have prevented the events that followed altogether by making his support clearer.)  
  
They stand together silently for a few moments, Bozer and Riley wearing their black attire that reminds him painfully of Jill’s funeral not so very long ago. These days, it seems like they never stop losing people.  
  
Mac’s head is lowered, hands clenching in a white-knuckled grip on the cap of his military formal wear, decorated with medals Bozer can’t place for the life of him. Seeing his friend in the evidence of his service touches upon that old fear and hurt like it always does and paired with his visible distress and pale and drawn frame Bozer’s mind is a jumble of worry. The feeling has been growing more insistent lately, and more than once has he almost grabbed his phone to dial a number that will surely get through to his childhood best friend, even when none of them can.   
  
“I- I think I need to be alone for a bit”, Mac whispers, eyes staring unseeingly into the ground, voice rough and heavy in a way Bozer doesn’t remember ever hearing before, not even when Nikki had supposedly died. He exchanges an uncertain glance with Riley, who looks equally as worried as Bozer feels, but then he looks back at Mac, at how shaky his composure is. It’s going to crumble any second now, of that he is certain, but he’s always been an intensely introverted, self-sufficient person. Mac grieves in private, if even at all, and Bozer doesn’t want to take that away from him. His best friend _needs_ to let things out, and he fears that if they insist on sticking around, he’ll just clam up even more.  
  
“Alright, man”, he finally says, pressing his hand in a tight grip around Mac’s worryingly small biceps, mentally planning the next few weeks of meal-prep in order to keep his best friend running. “Take your time. We’ll be here when you need us.” Riley voices her agreement, and then Mac is turning with a teary, grateful smile, one that settles an inexplicably heavy sense of fear in Bozer’s stomach. They watch him walk away together, vanish around the corner to the parking lot, Riley’s face drawn up in a frown. He tries to reassure himself that it’s just the grief and horror of the last few days eating away at his friend, but… Bozer can’t quite convince himself, and Riley doesn’t seem to believe it either. 

* * *

It takes them seven hours to realize Mac is gone. Bozer returns back home with Leanna after three, waits on his friend for another four until the sun has been set for a good hour and the darkness makes them both worry enough to pick up his phone and dial Riley’s number, asking her to track Mac’s cell for him just to be sure and puts her on speaker. She does so readily, and the familiar sound of her fingers clacking away at her keyboard along with Leanna’s warm, steady hand in his almost manages to calm him a little. Until he hears the shocked intake of breath on her end of the line and sees his girlfriend’s spine straighten.   
  
“Riley?”, he asks, more than a little panicked, Leanna already halfway out of her seat to spring into action immediately. “What’s wrong?”  
“ _I- I pinged his phone, and good news is I found it straight away, but – Boze, according to this it’s in your house_ ”, she answers, over the dim sound of her shutting laptop and fast, panicked footsteps. Bozer clocks her meaning immediately, following Leanna into the direction of Mac’s bedroom, mind spinning through all the horrible possibilities. Mac hasn’t been himself lately, and they’ve been home for almost four hours without hearing a single peep from him. He’s borderline insomniac on a good day, if he were home surely someone would’ve heard something? And his car isn’t in the driveway, that doesn’t fit any of this-  
  
When they tear open the door, Mac’s bedroom is completely untouched, no sign of life but thankfully not of death either. Leanna rushes over to check the en-suite bathroom as well, leaning back out with a look of relief on her face. “No body”, she says, and Bozer almost sags in relief before the tension comes flooding back in. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a body anywhere else, the Jeep still being gone. Or maybe someone took both Mac and his car in the span of those three hours - Mason is still on the loose, after all.   
  
With shaky hands, Bozer raises his phone to his face, holding Leanna’s worried gaze. “Riley”, he says, mind already flying through the list of things they still have to do, places they have to check, “call Matty. Mac’s definitely not here.”

* * *

The following days are a frenzy of Phoenix CSI, hunting leads all over the city and the team congregating in the war room, fighting battles on several fronts at once. The suicide option has been all but eliminated, as that would’ve had to leave some kind of trace. No bodies matching Mac’s description have come up over the days, and his Jeep was found only a few streets down from their house, parked by the curb in a dead spot not covered by any CCTV on the street. By all appearances, Mac seems to have driven straight home, dropped his phone and uniform, but after that it’s one big blank spot. The cameras in their neighborhood fritz out as soon as he enters their house, but there’s no evidence of any tampering. It could’ve been just about anyone, and all things combined they agree that a kidnapping is the most likely case. Most of the evidence seems to point straight in Mason’s direction, and in all the excitement everyone seems to forget about Mac’s recent bout of illness. None of them think to check his hospital records, and their house comes up clear.   
  
Simultaneously, Matty and Oversight get caught up in a heated fight for what Bozer gathers is probably Phoenix’ survival following the Mason debacle, but he honestly can’t quite bring himself to care beyond a passing thought. His best friend is missing.   
  
Desi is thrown into a frenzy of hyper-focus, almost bouncing off the walls with frustration; she punches her way through three boxing bags in the first week alone, but doesn’t inform Jack of the situation just yet, maybe because she’s clinging to the last vestiges of hope that Riley will turn up some evidence at the very last second and she can do her job and get her charge back. They both work tirelessly through the nights, dead set on the shadowy threat of Elliot Mason.   
  
He can’t say what prompts him to do it, search the house again even after Phoenix professionals have thoroughly cleared the place. Maybe it’s his best-friend-instinct that sets off his alarm bells, maybe it’s the memory of how off-rhythm Mac had been for _weeks_ before Charlie and Mason even entered the picture; but something about the kidnapping-theory just doesn’t quite ring true for Bozer, not enough to put the tiny voice of doubt at ease. Mac was hiding something from them all, he’s sure of it; something so massive and terrible he didn’t feel like he could confide in them and ran instead.   
  
It’s Nigeria all over again, except this time there’s no goodbye and no closure from Mac’s part, only unanswered questions and the terrible realization that he doesn’t want to be found. The last time he ran, Mac went to almost no effort to hide it; this time, his chilling competence is painfully obvious.   
  
Bozer knows there’s absolutely no guarantee that he will find some kind of clue in their space, and if he does it will almost certainly be accidental. Mac doesn’t play games like this, but he was also unmoored and in great emotional distress when he ran, so Bozer is counting on the human factor: a mistake that will ultimately lead them right to him.   
  
He scours every inch of Mac’s room, knocks on the walls even when it makes him feel a little ridiculous, checks the small attic where he finds two false passports and credit cards hidden underneath one of the floorboards. It strikes him as odd right from the start, forehead creasing-  
  
With a start, Bozer remembers a conversation he’d had with Leanna about the spy business, and how she told him that operatives of her caliber at the CIA were advised to keep a backup of false identities at hand at all times, along with a stack of cash and any immediately necessary items for survival like a weapon and credit cards in those names. But none of that is anywhere in sight, and he’s almost certain he didn’t miss any other spots up here. Sure, Mac could’ve been paranoid and taken the extra precaution of hiding all the things away in different spots, but it doesn’t sit well with Bozer.   
  
Quickly, he takes a picture of his findings and sends it to Riley, asking her to run them through Phoenix databases. If he’s right about this, they should almost certainly be registered.   
  
“Alright, Double-O-Boze”, he mumbles to himself, “Time to shine.”   
  
While he’s still waiting on Riley, he scours the surrounding area of Mac’s bed on his feet, even going so far as to remove the mattress. He almost wants to cut it open to take a look inside, thinking his best friend might’ve hidden something in the stuffing, but ultimately finds no signs of tampering and decides it can wait. The idea of the headboard doesn’t even occur to him until he pushes the whole frame away from the wall to take a look at it, and as his eyes are searching the wall itself something about the wood catches his attention.   
  
That… that’s definitely a latch, Bozer realizes. He drops to his knees so quickly it almost hurts, scooting forward to the other side in a frenzy; it’s quite big, about the size of an A4-sheet, definitely large enough to hide something in it for the run. If this is empty, he’ll have more than just a hunch to go on that Mac ran of his own volition.   
  
Thankfully it’s just a regular latch, not one of Mac’s complicated contraptions, and Bozer has it open within seconds. To his disappointment, it does contain a brown paper folder, and he almost sinks against the wall. _Maybe he was smart enough to hide stuff in separate places_ , he thinks darkly, grabbing the folder more on autopilot than anything else. But when he opens it, he finds no money or credit cards or even passports, only paper and what looks like dark printed film.   
  
Slowly, he draws the contents out, film first. His brain scrambles through the information it’s receiving through visual input frantically for several long moments, unable to make sense of it, before it all registers.   
  
Mac’s name and birthdate printed at the top. The hospital’s name. Lots of medical jumbo. The dark grey image, a bunch of blurry shapes. _Estimated date of conception_. The pieces fall together.  
  
“Holy shit”, Bozer whispers, just as his phone rings. 

* * *

He makes it back to Phoenix almost as if in a daze, starkly aware of the nondescript paper folder lying innocently on the seat next to him. When he thinks back to that car ride later, he honestly couldn’t tell how he made it into the war room without getting into an accident due to inattention. His mind is screeching over greased-up tracks at 200 miles an hour, sorting through all interactions with his best friend of the past few months. It all makes horrifying sense now: the nausea, his unhealthy pallor, sudden refusal to drink coffee or beer, how distant he seemed, how quickly his mental health took a turn for the worse…  
  
 _God, Mac is pregnant. With Jack’s children. Jack, who probably has no fucking clue about any of this._   
  
The worst part is how much sense it all makes. Mac and Jack weren’t in a committed relationship when the alpha left, of that Bozer is completely certain; he’s known for years how over his head his best friend was for his longtime partner, and had his suspicions about Jack’s feelings too, but isn’t the type to meddle in something that isn’t meant for him to see. He knows all too well how fragile Mac is emotionally, how much he yearns for love and acceptance, and Bozer has done his utmost to give him that over their many years of friendship. If that were to be turned on him, the fallout would be nuclear; it happened with Nikki, and if it happened with Jack Mac would’ve lost more than just a romantic partner. He would’ve lost someone essential to his life, someone who cared about him the way Bozer once thought only him and his family did, a best friend, so he’s always kept his silence. If it was meant to be things would work themselves out, he’d thought. He kind of wishes he was more of a meddler now.   
  
He doesn’t even bother adjusting his parking job straight across two spots right by the entrance, only thinks to grab the folder before jumping out and running across to the elevators as fast as he can. Before he left the house, he’d sent out a group text to the entire team for an emergency assembly, knowing even though it’s long after eight in the evening they’ll all be there still.   
  
Bozer speed-walks through the corridors of the Phoenix foundation, almost fully deserted at this time of night; only the odd lab tech with running experiments and some of the people involved in the behind-the-scenes mudslinging against the Department of Homeland Security and other intelligence agencies with Matty and James are still around. But he doesn’t stop to greet any of them, brushes right past with all the determination Wilt Bozer can muster.   
  
He finds the team lounging around the war room, managing to simultaneously look right on edge brimming with tension and uncharacteristically defeated; Riley has massive bags under her eyes, wearing the same washed-out grey hoodie as she was yesterday and the day before, Desi’s knuckles are bruised to all hell, Leanna’s got her arms folded in front of her body in a gesture Bozer knows is meant to ground her when she’s this close to falling apart, James MacGyver looks more weak and frail than he ever has before slumped in his seat, even after his chemotherapy, and even Matty can’t quite manage her usual unphased demeanor. And Bozer is about to give them an even bigger shock.   
  
He enters and immediately taps the glass windows to frost them over, drawing Matty’s raised eyebrow and Desi’s frown that seems permanently attached to her face these days while he takes his place right next to the big screen. “What’s going on?”, she asks, sharp and direct as always.   
Bozer’s grip on the folder tightens. “I think I know what happened to Mac”, he announces, and he might as well have dropped a bomb onto the floor. They all straighten up in surprise, a flash of hope on their faces before it’s replaced by confused apprehension. “What? How?!”, James demands, eyes wild with unfiltered worry. Bozer feels genuine sympathy for the man, something he hadn’t thought possible until a few weeks ago.   
  
“Riley, can you connect to the big screen please?” She immediately scrambles to get her rig out of her backpack and into her lap, connecting via Bluetooth and looking back at him expectantly when her own screen is mirrored on the large display. Bozer’s chest feels oddly light and cold, and his voice almost doesn’t sound like his own anymore. “Now hack into his personal medical records.”  
  
Desi steps forward in surprise, and even Riley stares at him uncomprehendingly for several seconds before she follows his instructions. Matty, whose patience is on a hair trigger after days of fruitless searching and constant arguing with higher-ups, frowns at him and voices her discontent. “Look, Bozer, I’m sure whatever you found is very interesting and will be a riveting read for all of us, but I really don’t see how-“  
  
Riley’s fingers stop typing. The file appears on the big screen, with a picture that’s unmistakably Mac in the corner. The room falls silent.   
  
Bozer watches the stages of realization race across their faces, the pure shock and disbelief, the struggle to comprehend what their eyes are telling them; Leanna and Desi look caught off guard, even Matty’s jaw drops, but Riley and James are the worst of all. The sheer devastation dawning on their faces rips his own weeping heart right in two. James stands as if in a trance, eyes fixed on the information displayed on the screen, and Riley’s shaking hands fly up to cover her mouth, but Bozer catches her bottom lip quivering.   
  
“Angus… Angus is _pregnant_?” It’s said more to himself than anything else, before James shakes his head almost beseechingly, looking at Bozer with eyes that beg him to tell him otherwise. “But that- no, no. No, that’s not possible, that can’t be.”  
  
Bozer blinks against the tears pooling in his eyes, opens the folder and draws out the dark film image slowly, hands to James what can only be a sonogram. He watches his friend’s father go through the same motions as he did not even an hour ago, taking in his son’s name and date of birth printed at the top, the _image of his grandchildren-_  
  
His sob is a guttural, broken thing, and James sinks back into his armchair like his legs will no longer hold his weight.   
  
“That’s… oh my god.” Desi is still staring at the screen, eyes narrowing as they flit down across the file. She throws an uncertain look around the room, arm coming up loosely to point at the screen, and asks, “That estimated date of conception is ringing a bell. Why?”  
  
It’s Matty who answers, absentmindedly as she still blinks through her own confusion. “Because that’s the day before Jack left on his mission.” The words seem to come as a surprise to her too, a bomb within the bomb that’s already exploded in their faces. She frowns down at the air, turning to look out at her agents, and repeats quietly to herself, “ _The day before Jack left_.”  
  
Leanna speaks all of their thoughts, points at the elephant in the room with a gentleness Bozer loves about her so much. “So… basically, Mac is three months pregnant, ran away, and Jack’s the father.” It feels oddly final, having it laid out like that in the open, explicitly without question. Mac is pregnant. He ran away. Jack’s the father.   
  
“Sonuva _bitch_ ”, Desi curses quietly to herself, hands balling into fists and dropping to her sides. James, who until this point has been staring at the sonogram in his hands and crying silently, slowly holds it back out to Bozer, who takes it back gingerly and watches as their big boss buries his head in his hands and lets the tears flow.   
  
Riley seems to snap back into reality, hands flying down onto her keyboard as she begins typing away furiously. Only moments later, a new tab flashes up onto the wall, and Bozer realizes it’s the lock screen of Mac’s phone. It holds a group picture of them all, taken months ago before Jack had left, before the secret of James MacGyver’s identity had been revealed. With a pang, he realizes that he can’t place the last time he saw Mac smile as freely as he does in that picture, pressed against Jack’s side with Bozer almost falling back against him. Riley pulls up the phone app, and there it is: a long list of outgoing calls, all missed, all of them to Jack’s number. Mac’s personal phone is almost exclusively made up of those calls, only the occasional interlude of Matty or Bozer’s name.   
  
Riley scrolls through the list, face growing increasingly distressed as she progresses. “August sixteenth had seven missed calls to Jack, that would’ve been the day he found out”, she mumbles almost manically to herself. “Seven calls again, four calls, four calls, five, six, four, three, one – only one per day for almost a month, and then no more calls at all after the nineteenth of September, also an unanswered call to Jack on the day Charlie died.” It sits heavily in the room, every new bit of information more devastating than the last. Riley closes the tab again, and clicks open a new document of Mac’s file also dated September 19.   
  
“It says here that he went in for a health check-up on the- the _babies_ , after being dosed with a redacted substance in an uncontrolled environment.” It makes even Bozer inhale sharply, who so far hasn’t thought much beyond the immediate revelation of his best friend being pregnant; but that’s correct, Mac had been exposed to a substance that day, had been gassed by Mason and stuck with an EpiPen right in his chest. God, he must’ve been terrified, and so incredibly lonely, sitting in that hospital room waiting for news on whether the children he carried inside were unharmed by the day’s events. 

“All tests came back clear, no harm came to either fetuses or carrying omega”, Matty reads out aloud. The relief that sweeps through them all is tinged with bitterness, but Bozer finds himself grateful that at least Mac hadn’t been forced to deal with a miscarriage on top of everything else that day. 

“I – wait, I’m just not getting it. Were Mac and Jack a thing before all this?”, Desi asks, brushing her unusually messy jet-black hair out of her forehead. Leanna shakes her head. “No, not officially. And not unofficially either, as far as I’m aware.”

Bozer finally finds his voice again and lays out the rest of his theory. “They were definitely not together before he left, but in love all right. Mac spent the night before Jack left away from our house, and definitely wasn’t dating or seeing anyone else in that timeframe. I think it was an accident that had him spiral, and then Mason pushed him over the edge.”

“So Mac leaves because he doesn’t feel safe here anymore, because Jack won’t pick up any of his calls and for whatever reason he feels that he can’t trust us to have his back”, Riley whispers, voice so broken it prompts Leanna to slide unobtrusively onto the arm of her chair and wrap an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. 

“Goddammit, and Jack probably has no idea about any of this because he’s too busy being an idiot”, Desi sighs, pacing across the back of the war room. She looks like she’s physically itching for something to punch, but whether that something is Elliot Mason, Jack or the general situation, Bozer can’t tell. Maybe all three. 

“We need to get Jack off that task force as soon as possible and find Mac.” Matty’s voice is back to its old strength, and when she looks at Bozer he can see the raging fire building up inside, the pain that’s being turned into the iron determination that has gotten her so far. “We _will_ find Mac and bring him and his children home.”

* * *

Mac regrets leaving the evidence of his situation as soon as the door falls in its lock behind him.   
  
He doesn’t know why he does it, if some tiny part of him still holds out hope that maybe they won’t hate him for doing this if they know, if he secretly hopes someone can send evidence of the life they created to Jack when he himself has given up, but it certainly isn’t because he forgets. Mac knows perfectly well the exact timeframe he needs to pull this off, and speed walks right past the headframe on his way to the ladder. Then he lingers over the loose floorboard longer than strictly necessary, and when he’s changed out of his uniform again and grabbed his smallest go-bag, he turns on his heels and tells himself he’s wasted too much time to go back now.   
  
The four identities he has on him are all unknown to the Phoenix, and only two of them American; one is French and the other Russian, and he knows exactly where he’s going.   
  
It takes less than two hours to get to LAX, and within another he’s on a plane across the Atlantic to the beautiful city of Paris under the name of Alphonse Dubois, whose hair is chestnut brown, wears a mustache and has a jawline just slightly off from Mac’s own, owing to some of Bozer’s old homemade prosthetics that attach onto the curve of his jaw and neck. It’ll have to be enough to fool facial rec, but Mac is ready to take that chance.   
  
The transformation is a cramped affair in a train bathroom at the very back carriage, thankfully for once not stuffed with people on their way to the airport. But then again, it’s the middle of a Thursday quite firmly outside of holiday season, so odds are in his favor. Thanks to the brown wig that had once been meant to turn him into the main character of a courtroom-drama, with rest of his get-up attached Mac definitely passes as the man in the picture. Which is technically him, in a way.   
  
He studiously doesn’t look back, refuses to think about what he has just left behind. Weakened resolve leads to emotion leads mistakes leads to him getting killed. That’s how these things work, in his experience. Just to be certain, he keeps on the baseball cap he used to get into the train without being caught on cameras but drops the scarf on an empty train seat. Lost and found will swallow it up along with any DNA evidence, and the less he looks like one of the people that boarded the train, the better. Any minute he can buy himself counts.   
  
He enters the dark and dusty apartment on the outskirts of Paris his contact could get him on six days’ notice many hours later, lets his bags drop to the floor and does a quick security check where he makes sure to draw the curtains. Then, finally, Mac sits down halfway across the world on the rickety couch that marks his new life, places shaking hands on his slightly swollen middle, and cries. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some sidenotes on the universe and the following chapter: I've decided to go with the intersex male omegas here, simply because of one harrowing afternoon spent trying to figure out the logistics of childbirth minus a vagina. so now Mac has a vagina. anyways.  
> some familiar faces make an appearance, and the explicit rating comes into play, if only for a teeny tiny flashback. no worries, jack will join the fray soon enough.  
> I have exams coming up mid-january, so not sure when I'll next update; but never worry, my head is full of horrible ideas, and your Mac-whump fix will come. toodles and pls leave a comment it would make me very happy and love you for eternity :)

_“Oh, fuck, darling – you feel so good, Angus, so damn good-“_

_“Fu- Ja-ack,_ fuck _, fuck me please!”  
_  
_Hot skin against hot skin. Jack’s dark grin above him, strong hands holding his wrists above his head. The still pulse of his cock resting inside Mac’s body, making him squirm even without moving a single inch. God, he feels overwrought, turned inside out already, just from having Jack slide into him, lick and suck at his body, leave bruises scattered across his neck.  
_  
_The alpha leans down, pressing Mac further into the sheets to nuzzle at his face. His heavy bulk boxes Mac in completely, keeps him caught in a bubble of_ JackJackJack _all around him, in him, between his legs and deep inside.  
_  
_His dark eyes are heavy with emotion, pupils diluted until his iris is little more than a thin brown ring of color. “God, I love you so much”, he whispers, breath puffing out over Mac’s slack lips in hot little clouds. Mac whimpers, grinds his hips up into the pressure of Jack’s cock as much as he can, clenches his cunt around him in the hopes it’ll finally make him move. The broken groan and slight hitch of hips shoots electricity up his spine, searing into the spot where his head and neck meet, right at the bottom of his skull.  
_  
_Their lips meet in a messy clash of tongue and spit and moans, and then Jack draws his hips back and starts to move, slow and steady, driving Mac right to the edge of insanity.  
_  
_“I love you, Angus”, he whispers, voice echoing far into the very tips of Mac’s being. “I love you. Don’t ever forget that. I love you, all of you, all thr-“  
_  
Mac jolts awake with a start, doused with sweat and shaking underneath the heavy blanket. For a moment, he can’t catch a single breath, trying desperately to gulp in cloying, heavy sludge, until he arches out of his curled-up position and his head breaks through the blankets, sucking in blessed, fresh air. It takes several lungfuls to calm his racing heart, stop the drumbeat of panic in his head, but he slowly starts becoming aware of his surroundings, the slivers of moonlight spilling through the heavy curtains, feels his shaking hands pressing against the swell of his belly.   
  
The sensation of warm skin under his fingers stretched firmly over the beginnings of a baby bump is the push Mac needs to start counting his breaths, timing inhales and exhales until his heartrate gradually drops from rabbiting to normal. He still feels unsteady, thrown off-balance by the remnants of that damned dream, but after _weeks_ of seeing it play out over and over again it’s a little easier to shake off the lingering effects on his body.   
  
Plus, the pressure in his gut becomes increasingly insistent the longer he rests there, a sure signal to get moving towards the bathroom. With one last deep sigh, Mac blinks through the blurriness clinging to his eyes, hefts the heavy blanket back and stands up. 

* * *

Walking down the bustling streets of Paris at the end of October is a chilly affair. Despite the thick woolen scarf and baseball cap covering his face, Mac feels painfully exposed, like a spotlight is following him wherever he goes.   
  
The solid black winter coat wrapped around his frame does a good job of hiding his baby bump out in public, but at seventeen weeks pregnant with twins it nonetheless becomes more obvious with every day that passes, and the aches and pains in his back don’t let up either.   
  
That’s why Mac needs to move fast, while he still can.   
  
Along with the tiny box of an apartment he rented off his contact came the promise of a new identity; between draining all four of his already existing false identities, his army stipend, investments over the years and the two patents he has on Phoenix R&D products, Mac is more or less set for the time being.   
  
_It won’t last you forever, not with two little ones on the way._  
  
He comes to a halt in front of a non-descript little bookshop, right in the center of Parisian city life. A glance at the well-worn watch on his wrist tells him that he’s five minutes early, all according to plan.   
  
Admittedly, Mac hasn’t figured out what to do beyond acquiring his new papers. Yet. While none of either Phoenix or Mason’s people have come knocking at his door, sooner or later he’ll have to come up with something; at the latest when they get Jack involved, which, unless something goes horribly wrong on the Kovacs taskforce, they _will_. Just the thought of it has Mac feeling sick, folding his hands in front of his stomach in a gesture of unconscious comfort.   
  
In a show of uncharacteristic nerves, Mac feels his heart pound as his eyes graze over the crowd. Every low-pulled hat, dark coat or thoughtfully lingering glance has him second-guessing himself. Is it the contact he’s supposed to meet? A hired killer sent by Mason? An unsuspecting French citizen?  
  
It’s like he’s been going at two-hundred miles an hour non-stop for the past few weeks. From the moment Mac touched down in Paris, he managed to lose himself in the familiar routine of a high-stakes boots-on-the-ground-running type mission.   
  
With a quiet sigh he turns his back to the street and start scanning the books showcased behind the transparent plexiglass of the shop’s front entrance. It doesn’t sit well with his instincts, makes something deeply distrustful bristle in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t want to look any more suspicious to onlookers than he’s already bound to by scanning the crowds so obviously and constantly. _Besides, you never know who’s watching._  
  
He doesn’t know what makes the book stand out to him next to all the others, fiction and fantasy and horror books his eyes gloss over of varying shapes and sizes. Its cover is nicely illustrated in water-colors, looks a little like an explosion of rainbows and stars, and maybe that is what draws his attention. And then he realizes he’s looking at a children’s story book.   
  
Two little mice are dancing through a field of flowers, butterflies weaving around them; it looks like one of them is holding a childish depiction of a wand, sparks flying around. They wear colorful robes and pointed hats, purple and red respectively; the title reads _Les souris dansantes_ – the dancing mice.   
  
Mac’s breath cuts out for one horrible second, and he feels a little like he’s having an out-of-body experience where his entire being tunnels in on the booklet blinking innocently back up at him from inside the shop, and the city’s sounds fade into the background.   
  
Somehow, throughout it all, the full-scaled implications of being pregnant haven’t set in until he’s forcefully confronted with them like this; he’s spent so long agonizing over the black-on-white hard print aspect of pregnancy, morning sickness and broken relationships and fleeing the US, that he almost managed to forget what it really means.   
  
_Fuck_ , he thinks, face hot and eyes burning suspiciously, _fuck fuck fuck, I’m going to be-  
_  
The dark, raspy voice of a man announces his presence next to Mac, and almost succeeds in making him jump in the air out of surprise, heart hammering wildly. But then his training kicks in, and he freezes up instead, clamps down on every single emotion roiling through his body and shoves them away for later.   
  
“ _Le principal fléau de l'humanité n'est pas l'ignorance_ ”, he murmurs, left shoulder just barely pressed against Mac’s own in a feather light touch. He can’t make out the exact proportions of the man’s face in the shop window, covered mostly by a scarf and flat cap mirroring Mac’s, but he thinks he catches sight of a black moustache and a large, lumpy nose.   
  
“ _…mais le refus de savoir_ ”, Mac whispers back without missing a beat, through the corner of his mouth. The man stills.   
  
“A wonderful woman she was, Mademoiselle Beauvoir”, he muses with a thick accent that hints at a Spanish upbringing. Mac turns his head to the side to give a curt nod. “Devastatingly underappreciated, as I’m sure you’d agree.”  
  
In tandem, they both turn towards each other, and Mac leans in to wrap his left arm around the man’s shoulders, covering the way his companion’s hand slips into the pocket of his coat to deposit a small folded envelope inside. The embrace doesn’t last very long, even when Mac claps between his shoulder blades for good measure but having anything else press against his stomach makes his skin crawl, even through the thick and numerous layers of clothes on both their ends. He feels a profound sense of relief when they release the embrace, smiling at a wizened face and bushy eyebrows cheerfully that will hopefully convey friendly _acquaintances_ to any passersby.   
  
“Well”, the man says, expression completely neutral, “I wish you a very nice day, my friend. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”   
  
Mac nods wordlessly and watches him vanish back into the crowd.

* * *

His exhaustion when he reenters the dark coldness of his bleak, grey apartment feels almost like a physical ache, the only indicators of his presence inside all hidden away in a secret compartment of his bag or the fridge. The only thing he really leaves lying around are his toothpaste and coat.   
  
He blows out a heavy breath as he unwinds the scarf from his neck and drops all of his outside clothing on the single chair in his possession. It’s a sad little three-room affair; kitchen plus living room, bathroom and his bedroom. All in all, he could probably fit the entirety of it into his old bedroom.   
  
The curtains are drawn as always, rickety little lamp humming away at the ceiling, doing its utmost to illuminate the sparse furniture that came with the apartment. All of it is one strong gust away from falling to pieces, and Mac is fairly certain his mechanical prowess is the only reason the shower is still even running.  
  
_Only a little more until you can leave again_ , he reminds himself firmly for the umpteenth time, although the thought brings no real comfort. Leave again where to?  
  
After making sure his new passport is stored securely inside his go-bag, Mac turns back to his discarded jacket with a long-blown out breath. He doesn’t know why he did it, why he didn’t come straight back here after completing the handover, but when he reaches into the pocket his long fingers wrap around the thin, hard line of a book’s spine, and pulls out the children’s story book that had almost caused him to drop his cover at the store.   
  
Staring down at it, for a moment he almost believes that he’s got a hold of himself this time, that the momentary lapse of emotion has faded - and then he’s slowly sinking to the ground, curling together around the innocuous book in his left hand while his right presses harshly over his quivering mouth to keep the sobs wracking his body quiet. Maybe it’s the stress of his former profession, or the circumstances he fell pregnant in, or the adrenaline of being hunted by a terrifyingly competent man that wants nothing more than to see him burn, but somehow the full implications of _being pregnant_ haven’t quite sunk in until this moment.   
  
He’s going to be a father.   
  
Two little babies will be born in a little less than six months, two tiny humans who will need his care and protection for many years. They will need a roof over their head, baby supplies, clothes, food, attention and love – and then a stable environment to grow up in, schools and friends and a _life_ that Mac has no idea how to give them. Maybe on his own he could manage to run for several more years, he’s certainly competent enough; but doing it pregnant will be hard enough. Doing it with two children who have no idea what they’ve been put in the middle of will be _impossible_.  
  
What can he really offer them, apart from a lifetime of constant fear and vigilance? Mason will find them someday, he’s too good not to. Mac can improvise his way through a lot of things, but he can’t improvise his children’s entire life. They deserve better than that.   
  
He curls up in on himself, even if the position on the floor puts an uncomfortable strain on his back; the twinge almost doesn’t register through the pain pounding away in his chest, causing hot tears to flow down his cheeks with abandon. He tries to quiet his heaving breaths as much as he can, but Mac is falling apart rapidly. He feels a little as if he were standing a massive, waterlogged boat, desperately shoveling buckets of water outside the sinking vessel to no avail, because he threw the means to fix the hole in the hull overboard weeks ago. Pressing lips together tightly, he slowly removes his hand from its tight clasp around his mouth and wraps his shaking arm around his swollen belly instead. It’s not a large or particularly noticeable swell yet, by any means, but enough that to him it feels monumental. He almost imagines that he can hear his children’s heartbeats inside of him, pounding away rhythmically like they did in his past doctor’s appointments.   
  
With a fervor that takes even him by surprise Mac wishes that Jack were here.   
  
He can’t do this on his own, and these nine months will be merely the start; he has delivery to think about, hospital stays, not getting caught by Mason, raising his children, giving them futures…  
  
He would give _anything_ to have Jack here, even if only for a single moment to hold Mac in his arms and stroke across his back lovingly like he did that night. He would give himself and all he has to ensure his children have Jack with them, that they get to know their father, because Jack is the best man Mac has ever known, and he would do right by them like Mac seems unable to.   
  
Dimly, Mac wonders if his own dad ever felt like such a failure as a parent, if that’s what drove James to leave.   
  
He’s reaching for his burner phone almost without meaning to, shaky fingers dialing the familiar pattern of a number he knows almost as well as his own, as he sinks slowly to his side in a curled-up position on the floor, hot tears and sobs still wracking his body while he presses the hard plastic to his ear tightly. His left hand is still clutching at that damn book, breath hitching while he listens to the call ring through to-  
  
“ _Who is this_?”   
  
Mac only barely manages to suppress the whine that tries to tear out of his chest, and it comes out as a shaky moan instead when he breathes down the line for several seconds, trying to talk through the sheer relief coursing through his body at hearing that familiar voice. God, how he’s _missed_ this. “H-hey, it’s me, Mac”, he eventually croaks out, wobbly smile pulling at his lips at the sound of surprise that crackles through.   
  
“ _Hey Mac, what’s going on? I haven’t heard from you in ages, it’s like five in the morning over here – is everything alright?_ ” Samantha Cage sounds just like Mac remembers from their phone calls, and much better than the last time he’d seen her in person, wobbling on unsteady legs as she left the hospital still weakened by the almost fatal gut-shot she suffered at the hands of Murdoc. Distantly, Mac thinks she’ll probably be happy to hear that their resident serial killer is back behind bars, where he belongs.   
  
For a split second, Mac hesitates, debates just hanging up again and leaving good enough alone, but then another sob wracks through his body and he hears the worried exclamation of his name. He can’t do this anymore, he can’t.   
  
“I – h-have you talked to t-the o-others late- lately?”, he asks weakly, voice broken up by the heaving breaths of desperate crying, vision still blurred with tears.   
  
Sam makes a dissenting noise. “ _No, not really, you’re the one I talk to the most out of everyone. Why, should I have?_ ”  
  
Mac snorts darkly, laugh distinctly strained even to his own ears. “Ah, n-no, don’t wo-worry. It’s just…” He trails off uncertainly, biting down on his lower lip so hard he can taste the metallic tang of blood spread in his mouth. “I – I’m not f-feeling so go- so good, Sa-am.” What an understatement.   
  
“ _Mac, you’re scaring me. What’s going on? You know you can tell me anything._ ” Her voice is low and soothing, and without the Australian accent Mac can almost picture Riley in front of him again, bringing him tea and reminiscing about Jack together. God, he’s fucked everything up so badly.   
  
In the end, he decides to just come out and say it. No point in dancing around the elephant in the room, after all.   
  
“I’m – I’m pregnant, Sam.” Ironically, it comes out far steadier than anything else so far, voice wobbling only the slightest bit. The noise she makes in response to his revelation is one of pure shock, somewhere between a gasp and a curse that has Mac wondering whether his friends back home would react the same way if they knew, or if they already have.   
  
“ _Mac, I – that’s –_ “, she fumbles, completely lost for words, but Mac isn’t done yet. He curls in on himself even further, until he’s just a tiny coiled ball on the floor, much like his babies are doing inside of him now. “They’re – they’re Jack’s. The twins, I mean. W-we – it was an a-accident, Sam, the n-night before he – before he _left_ , on that f-fucking mission, I tried calling h-him but he wouldn’t pick up, not once-“   
  
“ _Mac, listen to me now, okay? I need you to breathe, properly. Follow the sound of my own, try to match every inhale and exhale to mine, okay?_ ”, Sam’s firm, no-nonsense voice cuts through his panicked rambling, and he realizes that his chest is indeed rising and falling much too quickly, that his breaths are coming in short, wheezing bursts, and he’s more than halfway to hyperventilating. The noise he makes is strangled, barely even sounds human, but Sam seems to take it as confirmation that he’s heard her and starts breathing audibly into the phone, slow and steady. Mac struggles to match his breathing to hers at first, chest shaking with harsh spasms of his muscles, until he gradually starts feeling his limbs again, relaxes the almost painful clench of his fingers around the book and phone.   
  
He feels light-headed and charged with electricity, little shocks swimming across his skin, but the tears have finally stopped flowing and he can think somewhat clearly through the fog in his mind, concentrating entirely on the rhythmic breathing of Samantha Cage at the other end of the world.   
  
“ _Good_ ”, she murmurs softly after a while, quiet and soothing and a balm to Mac’s frayed nerves. He even manages a weak smile, even though she can’t see it. “ _Really good, Mac, that’s it. Just breathe for a second, alright? Keep talking only when you feel you can. I’m here, there’s no rush._ ”  
  
Mac nods jerkily, adding on a noise of assent when he realizes she can’t see him, and breathes for another few seconds. When his throat feels a little less like it’s caught in a constrictor knot’s stranglehold, he starts again, voice scratchy and rough with the after-effects of his guttural sobbing.   
  
“I’m… I really messed up, Sam. Jack left on a high-stakes operation for the Army four months ago, and… I don’t know why, but he wouldn’t pick up any of my calls.” He sniffles quietly, brushing the dark sleeve of his shirt over his eyes. “He doesn’t… he doesn’t even _know_ about them, and I was going to tell the others, but…”   
  
Haltingly, he tells her everything, from his fear of how his friends would react, to his dad’s diagnosis, to Mason and Charlie. He tells her about Paris, about the children’s story book, the ensuing breakdown, his fear that he’s already fucked up his children’s lives irrevocably before they’re even _born_. He tells her how close he came to booking a flight to Dallas instead, going down to Mama Dalton’s ranch and her almost certain warm embrace, but in the end hadn’t been able to do that to her, not when she didn’t know that the children he carries are Jack’s and he might not even want them. Mac couldn’t drive that wedge between Jack and his mother.   
  
Sam stays silent throughout it all, listens to him pour out his heart, and with a start he realizes that she’s the first person he’s told about any of this, the only one who even knows about his pregnancy outside of his doctor, who still thinks he’s on a vacation in Texas. She doesn’t interrupt, and when Mac finally falls silent almost an hour later, he’s surprised by how… _free_ he feels. His head is spinning with it, the euphoria of finally getting even a little bit of all that weight off his chest, of voicing it to another human being that he isn’t carrying inside his body.   
  
Halfway into his recount, Mac scoots up to relocate to his bed instead, unable to take the unforgiving hard wood on his bones any longer. When his voice breaks off, he finds himself staring into the empty air in front of him, snuggled back into his blankets with his arms wrapped securely around his middle, his left hand that’s not holding the phone stroking over the bump lovingly.   
  
“ _…wow_ ”, Sam finally says, after a full minute of silence. Mac snorts, and then gives a quiet sniffle. “Yeah”, he answers drily. “I know.”  
  
Sam sighs deeply. “ _Well, I guess if anyone were to find themselves in a mess that big, it would have to be you._ ” _Fair point_ , Mac thinks, before turning his attention back to where his friend is still talking.   
  
“ _Normally, I would tell you to stop being ridiculous and talk to the others, then go and read Jack the riot act, but… until we can dismantle Mason's entire operation with him, I don’t think that’s advisable. What you’re describing isn’t simply an attack on the Phoenix, he compromised it completely. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had more than a few of the big-shots in other agencies in his pocket._ ” Mac nods along to her musings, already having thought along similar lines himself. The doxing could have been explained as the result of a talented hacker, but to execute his plan that flawlessly, the man would’ve had to know everything about the Phoenix, had access to floor plans, personnel information and the like. Mac can’t even begin to imagine that someone could’ve snuck _all_ of that past Riley.   
  
Then, the rest of what Sam just told him registers, and he frowns in mild confusion. “Wait, we?”  
  
His friend chuckles lightly at the other end of the phone. “ _Yeah, we. You didn’t seriously believe I was just going to send you on your merry way again? You’re getting on the next flight to Australia, sweetheart, and then we’ll go from there._ ” She barrels straight over the noise of protest he tries to make, doesn’t even let him start on all the reasons why that’s a terrible idea. “ _Look, Mac, I know you’re an extremely capable covert operative, and I respect your skillset, but that’s not the situation at hand. Right now, you’re a pregnant omega carrying twins, and no one in their right mind would leave you out there on your own with a murderous psychopath after you. What’s the plan, hide away in some hole in the wall until you give birth somewhere in a roadside shack and then hope that your toddlers will play along for as long as possible? Get them new fake identities every other month and uproot their entire lives?_ ”   
  
The silence that follows rings louder than any words he could've given her as an answer.  
  
" _It’ll never work, not even considering the fact that it’s financially impossible to sustain for longer than a couple of years. You need proper medical care, a fixed roof over your head and people who support you and can protect you but aren’t directly affiliated with the Phoenix. You can get that here along with a breather and then properly plan out your next step to bring you all home. Please, Mac. Let me help you._ ”   
  
Mac stays silent for a long time after Sam finishes talking, mulling over her words. She’s right, of course she is, Mac knows that; he’s in an impossible situation that is bound to blow up in his face sooner or later, and the ones who will suffer the most for it will inevitably be the kids. But, on the other hand, trusting an outsider with their safety... he’s managed on his own for a month already, hasn’t he?  
  
_Yeah, and look where that got you; bawling your eyes out somewhere in Paris, completely isolated from everything you love. What a life. But hey, at least you’ve put off that bullet in your head for another few months._  
  
He takes a shuddering breath, tells the black, shadowy tendrils of fear wrapped around his mind in a stranglehold to shove it, and gives Cage her answer.   
  
“O-okay. Okay. You’re right, I can’t do this on my own. I need to fix this, for their sake. Tell me where to meet you.”

* * *

Predictably, Riley’s first instinct on her search proves to be right.   
  
She finds Desi pummeling another boxing bag in the deserted Phoenix gym, on the second Sunday morning after the revelation of Mac’s pregnancy and subsequent disappearance. She looks every bit as coiled and furious as Riley feels, slamming her wrapped fists into the material with a solid _thunk_ over and over and over again.   
  
Riley comes to a halt a few steps short of the mat Desi’s standing on, folds her arms in front of her body and watches. Judging by the light sheen of sweat glistening in the late morning sun, the other woman has been at it for a while; the tattoos not covered by her tank top and gym shorts ripple almost hypnotically with the harsh movement of her muscles. Riley has no visibility of her coworker's face from her point of view, but she pictures gritted teeth and clenched jaw muscles, dark brown eyes boring holes much more devastating than the impact of her fists into the bag.   
  
She makes no move to interrupt the display of intense frustration, admittedly more than a little transfixed by the sheer physical strength rippling through Desi’s misleadingly slim frame in front of her. Between the fact that they’ve known each other for all of four months, the mess of Mac’s disappearance and her ensuing refusal to do more than grunt at anyone in the days immediately after, she realizes with a start that they haven’t actually spent any amount of time together that can be seen as substantial, even counting missions. Desi is always so tense and coiled, like she’s readying herself for a catastrophe any given second, and it reminds Riley painfully of… well, more than a few people, to be honest. Mac ever since Jack had left, for one.   
  
With a high-pitched snarled grunt, Desi delivers one last devastating left hook to the punching bag before slapping her right hand against the rocking motions, effectively halting it in its swing. She drops her forehead against the material for a long, drawn-out second, releases a shuddering breath and turns around in Riley’s direction. Her face shows absolutely no surprise at her presence, cheeks reddened in exertion.   
  
“Team meeting?”, she asks curtly, still drawing only tightly controlled breaths shallowly into her chest. Riley very firmly doesn’t let her eyes drift across the stylized lettering framing her collar bones.   
  
“Nah, just checking in”, she replies instead, shifting her weight from one heeled boot to the other. Her leather jacket creaks in the near silence of the open room.   
  
Desi regards her with a piercing look, face framed by a couple of errant black strands that have escaped her ponytail. A heartbeat passes, and then she gives a single nod, brushing past Riley to make a beeline for the closest bench with a black hand towel and a half-full bottle of water.   
  
Riley sits down silently next to Desi, who takes a big gulp of the cool liquid, before letting the bottle drop back down into her lap. She’s looking at Riley expectantly, and with a start she realizes that she’s been just silently staring at her coworker for several seconds now.   
  
“I – I just wanted to see if you were doing okay with all this”, she rushes to say, leaning her elbows forward against her knees somewhat awkwardly. “And… I’m sorry for freezing you all out like that and becoming a hermit for the past week.”  
  
Desi grunts lowly. “Eh, don’t apologize. It’s a shitshow of apocalyptic proportions. And you and Jack were… _close_.” She stumbles over her own words for a moment, before settling on _close_ with a distinctly awkward firmness.   
  
Riley chuckles, smiling sadly at the other woman. “You can call him my dad, y’know. He basically is.”  
  
For the first time in maybe ever, Riley can clearly make out the beginnings of a genuine smile pulling at Desi’s lips, not a grin or grimace, or a snort.   
  
“Yeah. He talked about you a lot, you know. Jack was always yapping on about something or other, but with you it was like a damn record with no off switch – Riley this and Riley that, Riley’s amazing, have I sent you the picture I took with Riley on her first trip to the shooting range yet?” She grins at Riley mischievously, who doesn’t even try to press down on the embarrassed little smile blooming on her face. Desi leans back against the wall, brushing away a thick strand of hair that sticks to her forehead.   
  
After a moment of hesitation, Riley clears her throat. “Did… did he talk about Mac, like that?” It earns her a raised, well-groomed eyebrow, but despite the slight apprehension on her face, Desi starts to answer her question slowly.   
  
“He… didn’t spend hours going on and on about him, if that’s what you mean. Not like with you.” She feels herself sag in disappointment, the cutting sensation of hope crumbling in on itself. It hurts so much she has to avert her eyes from Desi’s face. “But – when he did, there was always that edge of… _reverence_.”  
  
She says it with a note of wonder, but it doesn’t sound strange coming from her mouth, like the thought is a familiar one. Riley’s head snaps back up to stare at her. “Jack and I didn’t talk that often, not on a weekly basis at least. And after meeting Mac, I think it honestly would’ve been impossible to describe any of the shit he does over a phone call, so I get where he was coming from. But the first thing I ever heard Jack say about him was that the annoying blond bomb nerd had grown on him so much he _done moved to LA, Dez, fuckin’ Cali of all places._ ” Riley snorts at the terrible impression of Jack’s Texan twang, thinking maybe a little uncharitably that it sounds more like Cockney.   
  
Desi lets her smile fade slowly, dark brown eyes turning a warm look of seriousness that does surprisingly much to soften her features compared to her usual cutting brand of dryness. “My point is, I knew from the first damn call I got after his second discharge that he was wrapped around that man’s little finger. Jack’s a loudmouth extraordinaire, but I’ve never seen him so done for as when he was lost for words talking about Mac. He loves him, Riley, he really does.”  
  
She leaves her words to sink in for a moment, giving Riley some space to collect her thoughts. When she speaks again, her voice is uncharacteristically gentle. “Where is all this coming from, Riley?”  
  
The omega finds herself struggling for words, mouth trying to form the indistinct shapes of sounds she can’t quite settle on. But Desi doesn’t pressure her, only watches Riley release a heavy breath with those kind, brown eyes and waits patiently for her to speak.   
  
“I… well, did Jack ever tell you why we grew apart in the first place?”, she asks finally, chest squeezing in on her rapidly beating heart. The older woman shakes her head silently, and Riley huffs out a nervous little laugh. “My biological father was an abusive sack of shit, basically, and when he tried to come crawling back and prove his manhood by slapping my mom around, Jack threw him right back out on his ass bruised to all hell. Took him down a good few notches, and he never tried anything physical again after that. But… I don’t know, I guess my mom was so traumatized by her experiences that it put a strain on their relationship, and not long after she told me that Jack had broken things off between them.” Lowering her eyes without conscious effort, Riley tries desperately to get the trembling of her bottom lip under control. “I was fourteen at the time, I think, and he wasn’t around for long, but Jack was such a huge part of my life, the only real father I ever had. And then one day, he just… wasn’t there anymore. Didn’t even say goodbye. It took me so long to forgive him for that, and-“, she breaks off suddenly, inhales a shaky breath and presses her fingers together tightly, knuckles white and bloodless with the force of her grip.   
  
“Riley-“, Desi starts to say, but before she can continue Riley cuts in, voice almost feverish with desperation. “I know Jack’s a good man, and I know that he doesn’t mean to skip out on Mac and his kids. He has good intentions, and if he finds out about this, it’s going to fucking destroy him, but…”  
  
“But it brings up difficult memories and complicated emotions for you”, Desi finishes when her sentence trails off, gentle and understanding. Riley lets her eyes flick up to the beta’s sweat-covered face, pallor slowly returning to a more neutral color again. She finds only sympathy and a deep, burning sadness in those dark, chocolate-colored eyes.   
  
“Yeah.” The heaviness of her confession hangs between them for another few seconds, and part of Riley is fraught with panic and the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed. Laying out her emotions like this, making herself purposely vulnerable, was almost impossible even before she went to prison.   
  
Desi regards her consideringly, almost like she’s weighing her up, before she speaks too. “I haven’t talked to him since Mac vanished. But he missed a lot of my calls even before that, the whole manhunt is keeping him busy most days.” She sighs tiredly, drops her head back against the wall, looking more defeated than Riley has ever seen her. “At first I hoped we’d find Mac and everything would be alright, but now I just can’t bring myself to tell Jack that I failed him in the one thing he asked from me.”  
  
“Desi, you didn’t fail anyone”, Riley says firmly, surprising even herself with the fervor in her voice. Desi’s head snaps around, staring at her in obvious surprise. “I’ve been friends with Mac for much longer than you, and he didn’t tell me either.” The corner of Desi’s mouth twitches in a commiserating smile.  
  
“This whole thing is just… so incredibly fucked up. I mean – _twins_.”   
  
Riley snorts weakly. “Yeah, twins.” She blinks, suddenly brought up short. “ _Twins_. Holy shit.”  
  
They look at each other with wide eyes, thinking of tiny little hands and incomprehensible babbling, of food stains on the wall and poopy diapers – and then the sheer surrealism of the situation hits them both like brick wall all at once, and when Desi’s mouth starts twitching, Riley can’t hold in her own panicked giggles in any longer. They break out into laughter, and every time one of them gets herself back under control they catch sight of the other and it’s a lost cause again. Tears of… something run down Riley’s cheeks, and she sees glistening tracks mirrored on Desi’s own angular face, her smile so breathtaking it makes something warm twist in her stomach, like she hasn’t felt with anyone but Billy in a long time.   
  
Their breakdown is interrupted by the chime of a text on Riley’s phone, which she pulls out of the back pocket of her jeans while still quietly sniggering at Desi’s own gulping laughter, brushing leftover tears out of the corner of her eyes.   
  
What she sees on her screen immediately throws her back onto the cold, hard floor of reality, and when Desi catches her rapidly fading amusement she immediately perks up. “Riley? What’s wrong?”  
  
Riley stares down at the words on her screen, rival instincts warring within herself. Should she tell the other woman? Is she even allowed to? Does it matter whether it happens now or later? _Doesn’t she deserve to know?_  
  
With that last thought, she settles on a decision, and looks up at Desi’s worried face. “It’s Matty”, she says slowly. “The negotiations with Homeland Security are going… a little rough.”  
  
Desi frowns, back straightening out into what reminds Riley painfully of Jack’s military attention stance. “What do you mean by rough?”  
  
Riley swallows down the instinctive bout of apprehension and mistrust bubbling up in her throat. “I mean – they’re probably going to shut us down.”  
  
The beta blinks at her slowly, visibly struggling to catch up. “I’m – I’m sorry, _what?_ But what about Mac?!”  
  
Riley chews on her lower lip, fingers hovering over the keyboard in consideration. “I don’t think they really give a shit, Desi. Mac’s good, but he’s only one agent, and not even Matty’s track record will be enough to get us through being compromised a second time, especially this thoroughly and with Mason still escaping custody.”   
  
Desi stares at Riley in sheer outrage, eyes flaming with cold fury that sends shivers down her spine. “And, what, they’re just going to leave a pregnant omega to be _hunted_ like a fucking _dog_?! That’s- that’s inhumane, they can’t do that!” She springs out of her seat, gesturing aggressively with her right hand, still wrapped from boxing. She looks dark and dangerous and _fierce_.   
  
“I won’t stop. I don’t give a shit if we lose our jobs, clearances, government support – I’m not just going to leave Mac all on his own like that. We’ll – fuck, I don’t know, we’ll run an illegal taskforce out of Bozer’s garage or something, have you hack the Pentagon again, do it on a volunteer-basis. I’m technically certified to fly a jet, we’ll steal one for exfil if we need to-“  
  
Her angry rambling cuts off abruptly when Desi catches sight of the smile blooming on Riley’s face, so wide it feels like it’ll split her cheeks right apart. There’s something dangerously attractive about how ready Desiree Nguyen is to immediately commit treason for her team, after just over two months of having worked with Mac. Riley thinks of an Afghan villager, the cold conviction and open honesty shining through chocolate eyes, and forcefully tamps down on the surge of intoxicating adrenaline underlying all of it, the same feeling that drove her into hacking in the first place.   
  
“What?” Desi’s demand isn’t mellow, by any means, but it isn’t the bark it might’ve been a month ago, and that alone prompts Riley to speak.  
  
“I’m always up for some Netflix n’ treason, first of all, but there might be another way – I’ve been doing some digging for Matty, and we’re as certain as can be that Mason has several high-ranking officials in almost every agency calling for our operations to be shut down on his payroll. I’m working on identities and solid proof.”   
  
“So, we expose the moles in their ranks and they’ll let us off the hook?”, Desi asks slowly, fingers flexing like she’s itching for a more hands-on approach.   
  
Riley shakes her head with a grin. “Not exactly. But in exchange for not making a massive spectacle out of it, they might just leave us in peace when someone buys us up instead. As a private contractor.”   
  
“…a private contractor”, Desi repeats with a raised eyebrow, voice the same tone of apprehension as Riley’s was when Matty first took her aside privately in her office and laid out her and Oversight’s plan. Riley shrugs.   
  
“I wasn’t crazy about it either, but Matty will vouch for him. And it’d give us the necessary freedom to run a full-scale operation on Mac’s disappearance, plus the leverage to get Jack off the taskforce permanently. Apparently, this guy’s got some serious cash and a bunch of highly-trained operatives ready to replace Jack at a moment’s notice.”  
  
Slowly, Riley rises from her seat, coming face-to-face with the other woman, her heels putting them almost exactly at eye-level. She keeps her shoulders relaxed, stance open and comfortable under Desi’s gaze.   
  
“Look, Desi, I know this is a lot, but I would do _anything_ to find Mac. And I mean anything, including taking a chance on whoever this contractor Matty’s unearthed from the depths of her contacts is. He may be shady, but if it gets us even an inch closer to Mac, I’m in.”  
  
Desi doesn’t say anything for a long, tense moment, before she gives a sharp nod. “Okay. You’re right, can’t be much worse than actual treason.”  
  
They share a quiet giggle, Riley’s head feeling almost dizzy with the intense relief coursing through her. Try as she might, she can’t get the goofy smile off her face.   
  
“Oh, and Riley?”, the older woman adds, after their laughter has tapered off. Her hands hang loose and open by her sides, tattoos coiled around the length of her arms, snaking down underneath her tank top and reaching all the way to her ankles. Riley has to fight to keep the blush off her face. Her smile seems to light up the room, more than the sun spilling through the windows ever could. “Call me Dez.”  
  
Riley feels her mouth drop open, before she catches herself and throws a grin back at the other woman. “Alright, _Dez_. Call me Riles.”  
  
The brief touch of Desi’s fingers to her leather-covered arm does more to restore her hope than any developments of the past week. Watching their newest family member turn and stalk off towards the showers, Riley feels a bone-deep conviction that they’re going to find Mac. They’re going to find him, and then they’re going to fix whatever has been broken between them all.   
  
_No, not broken. Just cracked. Some duct tape and a little improvisation can go a long way, Riles._

* * *

Hours after Mac has ended his call with Cage, hung up with the strange sensation of fresh hope blossoming in his chest, he’s standing in his shower, lets the lukewarm water hit against the sore muscles of his back while he strokes reverently over his stomach. It’s the first time he’s really taken the time to look at it and feel since finding out, running the flat of his palm over the slight swell in pure wonder. Two little humans forming and growing inside of him, a miracle performed by his own body, new life created by Mac and _Jack_. It brings tears to his eyes, but not of devastation; for once, Mac simply lets himself bask in the magic and amazement of it all. He doesn’t know how long he stands there for, only that he steps out and dries himself off long after the water has already turned cold.   
  
He doesn’t linger to regard himself in the mirror, knows the heavy bags he’d still find underneath his eyes; instead, he snuggles deep underneath his covers, grabs the story book still on his bedside table, and begins to read with a little trepidation.   
  
The knock at his door comes as a surprise, and Mac’s instinctive reaction is to tense all over with a hammering heart before he remembers his next-door neighbor Madame Girod, who always forgets to buy eggs and comes to him for help more often than not. With a fond little sigh, he throws back the covers and leaves the book open on page seven on his nightstand, where the sorcerer mice find their wands for the first time. He pads over to his door with a yawn, stretching his arms behind his back languidly and smiles at the way his grey t-shirt pulls taut over his middle, just tight enough to show off his baby bump perfectly. He opens the door-  
  
-and immediately finds the cold barrel of a handgun pressed against his belly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: contains graphic violence against a pregnant person in the first part. if that's not your jam, skip to the cut and read the rest xx (also some murder)
> 
> heyheyhey how's it going my dudes back at it again with a new chapter! this one's a doozy, and things are starting to get real. I don't wanna spoil too much but there's some light at the end of the tunnel at last. also, just so it's been said: jack dalton's alive in this house y'all, I don't fuck with canon like that. anyways enjoy, leave a comment, and scream at me on Tumblr. will accept any and all of the above with tears of gratitude.

Mac freezes with bone-deep terror, eyes caught in a daze on the dark gloved hand pressing the cold metal nozzle against his bump. It’s jammed up right against its swell, and he can feel his hand tightening around the cool copper handle of his front door, mentally calculating the amount of force he’d need to-

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, a dark, heavily accented voice whispers quietly into the space between them. Mac’s eyes snap up to land on a large, bulky man’s face, the broad cut of a jaw and a distinctly Slavic nose. He has long, black hair tied back in a ponytail, tucked underneath a baseball cap that matches the dark colors of the rest of his ensemble.

After another beat of silence, the man speaks again, voice low so as not to attract any attention. “You are going to turn around, walk back into your living room, and follow my instructions. Clear?”

Mac nods wordlessly and does exactly as he’s been told. The panic gripping at his joints is starting to seep into his mind slowly, jumbling his thoughts into an incoherent mess of _shitshitshitfuckshit-_

Swallowing heavily, he pushes all of that into a tiny corner in the back of his mind, along with the sensation of cold metal digging into his lower back. _I will_ not _let them die_.

“I guess Murdoc didn’t get you after all”, he croaks out, praying to high heaven his voice sounds more confident to the assassin than it does to him. Somehow, judging by the low, rumbling laughter accompanied by the quiet creaking sound of the front door’s hinges as it swings closed, he doubts it.

“You remember me”, the man says, with an almost disturbingly gleeful note to his voice as he directs Mac to stand in the middle of the room. He lets his eyes flit over his surroundings, noting with growing despair the bleakness of his apartment. If he could only buy himself enough time-

A large, meaty paw clamps down on his shoulder, and Mac squares them back to suppress the full-body-flinch that wants to tear through his frame, even as he’s turned around to face his captor’s self-satisfied expression, kitchen now placed squarely at his back. _Great._

“He certainly tried”, the hulking figure continues, gesturing to the side with his handgun. If Mac can keep him talking- “But, as you can see, I was luckier than my colleagues from his… _Collective_.” He near enough spits the word out, not even attempting to mask his distaste even in the boiling behind his dark eyes. Mac smiles humorlessly, starkly aware of the way the man is keeping his arm holding the gun relaxed, now resting against his massive thigh.  
  
“Not a big fan myself, I have to admit. Though I think I like your current employer even less.”

The man bellows out a laugh that sounds more like a growl than anything Mac would associate with good times and banter, shrugging listlessly as he pulls a smartphone out of his pocket. “Well, what can you do – I like his money well enough. Now do us both a favor and don’t smile for this, while I-“  
  
He raises his gun and phone simultaneously, pointing both straight at Mac while making sure the weapon remains clearly in frame as the shutter clicks off; it’s as good a chance as he’ll get to pull this off, hands shooting out to grab hold of the thick wrist attached to the hand with the gun to _wrench_ it sideways.

It gives way with a chilling _crack_ , but Mac doesn’t pause for even an instant, already driving his head forwards into the large nose that snaps underneath the blow’s sheer force and sends his opponent crashing to the floor with a muffled scream of pain. Mac’s head is spinning, and he kicks the gun across the room where it slides underneath the rickety curtains of the dining table window, staggering backwards already half-turned to the kitchen-

Then he’s tackled to the ground from behind, slimmer frame not standing a chance against the bear of a man and trained killer throwing himself against the omega. He only barely manages to turn their fall so it doesn’t end in him landing on his stomach, instead struggling sideways against the one-armed chokehold around his neck. He drives his elbow backwards into the man’s unprotected side with no resistance from any sort of bulletproof vest or Kevlar; he probably hadn’t counted on the pregnant mark to try and WWE their way out of this. He can already see the counter-

It produces little more than an angry wheeze and the slightest easing of the iron band of muscle and leather around his throat, Mac’s fingers already wedging between his throat and the asphyxiating pressure around it, when he’s suddenly, violently dragged to his feet with a low grunt of effort in his ear. Gasping, he staggers against the much larger frame behind him, whimpering as a dark voice hisses in his ear, “ _You little fucker-_ “  
  
Pure adrenaline and instinct take over, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Jack’s soothing Texan lilt narrating the motions of his limbs.

_Tuck in your chin, hoss, keep breathin’. Step out your left foot to give yourself some room to work with._

He can’t let his children die like this, can’t let himself be captured by the snarling man behind him and brought before Mason-

_Blunt force trauma to the groin usually does the trick, use every single second it gives you – and stomp on a foot for good measure if you can._

A howl of pain reverberates through his tiny apartment, among the flurry of limbs struggling for the upper hand, and Mac finds himself praying for the umpteenth time that day that none of his neighbors will come looking. A civilian is the last thing he needs right now-

_Once you’ve got them hunching in on themselves, break the stranglehold by turning out of it and pushing against the arm around your neck. And then punch their damn lights out, don’t let them get their hands on you a second time._

Mac spins to the side, already pushing the assassin’s still intact wrist downwards out of the way and draws his fist back to deliver the finishing blow when it all goes _wrong_ , the arm in his grip suddenly wrenched away and then he’s backhanded across the face so hard everything around him greys out for a second. He crashes back against the kitchen’s counter-top painfully, still reeling as an iron hold suddenly clamps down on his throat, cutting off all his air.

His eyes wrench open, lips moving soundlessly as he desperately tries to suck in precious air. Mac’s lungs _burn_ with the need to breathe, but the man above him doesn’t let up his grip by even a fraction of an inch, snarling down at Mac with blood streaming down his chin from his broken nose.

Mac doesn’t quite actively register what happens next. One instant, his left arm is flailing in the air, then his fingers close around a smooth handle and then…

And then he can breathe again, heaving on his knees next to the still, bloodied heap of his attacker, red-stained knife in his shaking hands.

He blinks, breathing echoing heavy in his ears, chest rising and falling as if in slow-motion. A high-pitched whining noise starts overwhelming him, and the sound of the knife clattering to the floor fades into the background.

Blood is splattered all around Mac and the unnamed assassin, spreading out in a puddle underneath the corpse on the floor, running down the cabinets, soaking his own shirt and sweatpants. With wide eyes, he stares at his crimson-stained hands and forearms, thinks he might be able to feel it on his face too. His attacker’s eyes are brown and empty, looking sightlessly up at the ceiling, black shirt mostly hiding the multiple stab wounds to his torso and chest.

Mac falls back against the kitchen cabinet, still tangentially aware that his breath is coming far too fast but unable to really hear or feel it over the rushing in his ears or his lightheadedness.

_I just- I did-_

_I just killed someone._ Mac thinks his mouth might have moved, but he doesn’t know if he voiced his thoughts out loud.

He blinks again and then his shaky hand is pressing a plastic rectangle to his right ear, listening to the dulled sound of a call going through and subsequently being accepted. He clears his throat, bloodied hand pressed against his stomach, eyes never leaving the still form on his apartment floor.  
  
“H-hey. It’s me. I need your help.”

* * *

Fingertips drumming incessantly on the dark tabletop, Mac scans the crowd around him with sniper-like precision. The shirt he wears is made of soft white linen, so wide it almost hides his bump successfully, and yet the loose collar still feels suffocating. He has to physically restrain himself from checking his phone too obsessively, lest he stand out to the other customers of the tiny street café only a few miles out from Perth’s airport.

Mac hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, not since he’d dozed off on his overnight flight from Paris to Singapore and gasped himself back awake almost instantly, heart pounding and hands shaking around sweaty palms, unable to get the image of the scene he’d left in his tiny box of an apartment only a few hours ago out of his head. He’d white-knuckled the armrests for the entire flight, having to suppress a flinch every time the elderly woman next to him so much as shifted in her sleep.

Surrounded by a varied crowd of carefree Australians chattering among themselves animatedly, he doesn’t find it any easier to relax. He knows objectively that the weather is comparatively hot next to the icy bite of Parisian winds, but all the sunshine in the world can’t reach past the constant sense of panic that clouds his thoughts right now.

Something shifts at the edge of his vision, and then a low, melodious voice does exactly that.

“Hey sweetheart, long time no see!” Samantha Cage grins at him, a twinkle in her emerald eyes as she slides into the seat across from Mac and immediately reaches to cover his trembling hands with her own. He can’t help the way his shoulders sag in pure relief, head spinning as he does his best to return her smile, having to suppress tears as she squeezes gently around his fingers. Her hands feel dainty and calloused and _real_ , and if Mac weren’t a trained covert operative, he’d be sobbing on the floor right now.

“Sam”, he chokes out, squeezing back just as hard, voice strange and unfamiliar in his ears. When was the last time he’s actually talked to someone? “I’m – h-hey. I’ve missed you.”

She dips her head with a mysterious little chuckle, winks at him as she scoots her chair back again. “I’ve missed you too, Mac. I’m parked four blocks away, wanna go on a walk?”

She stays blessedly silent the whole way there, lets Mac get his bearings back as they walk through the city streets side by side and doesn’t even point out the way he white-knuckles the straps of his backpack. Even as she reverses her sleek silver convertible out of her parking spot, all Sam does is hum quietly under her breath, light green eyes flicking to meet Mac’s in the rearview mirror every now and then.

And by god, it takes all of Mac’s emotional energy to keep a lid on the hot tears that want to escape; seeing Sam like this, radiant and golden and _alive_ , is a shock to his system in the best possible way. He remembers vividly the way she’d looked, ashen complexion, struggling to even sit upright in her hospital bed because of Murdoc.

_Because of you._

“Alright”, she finally breaks the silence, steering them onto a highway that leads away from the city center. “We’ve got about two hours of driving ahead of us, me and my sister live a few miles outside of a little place called Bunbury.”

Chuckling nervously, Mac plays at the hem of his shirt as he looks over at his friend, aiming for a carefree grin that feels like it falls miles short. “I hope you don’t mind taking a break halfway through, my bladder’s not what it was.”

Piercing green eyes flick from the road over to the ever-growing bump in his middle, the lines of Sam’s face softening momentarily.

“Yeah”, she mumbles, flawlessly overtaking a black Audi ahead of them.

The silence only stretches for five short seconds before Mac has to lift a trembling hand to his mouth, hot tears streaming down his face as he keens quietly in an effort to control his sobs. Sam doesn’t say anything, only lifts her left hand off the wheel to squeeze in a reassuring grip around Mac’s bicep.

“I’m – I’m sorry”, he gasps, inhaling a lurching breath that wheezes through his chest enough to make him feel light-headed.

Sam looks over at him briefly, enough for him to catch her smile, even through the blurry film of tears. “Hey, it’s okay – you’ve been through a lot in the past few months. I’d be more worried if you didn’t cry, quite frankly.”  
  
Mac chuckles wetly, wiping flimsy white fabric across his cheeks in a feeble attempt at controlling the flow of tears before squeezing tightly at her small wrist in gratitude. They don’t seem to want to stop, but at least the iron band around his chest has eased a little.

“I messed up really badly”, he says suddenly, voice small and unsure over the blast of the AC. Mac stares straight ahead on the highway, concentrating on the license plate of the vehicle in front of them for at least partial relief from his thoughts. “It just… happened so fast, I don’t know. I wish… I wish that I had tried harder, Sam. I should’ve left a voice message or-“  
  
“No”, Sam cuts in, voice steely and determined. Mac blinks at her in confusion, mouth dropped open on a tiny o-shape. “No, you didn’t do the wrong thing, Mac. It wasn’t the ideal thing, but that’s not your fault. You have no idea to which extent Mason compromised your security, for starters, and I highly doubt that this is the sort of thing you’d want to leave on Jack’s voicemail.”  
  
Blowing out a long breath, Mac sags against the faux-leather seat. “Yeah, okay. I just… I don’t know. I wish things were different.” He laughs quietly, corners of his mouth twitching almost against his will even as the tears still run down across his cheeks. “You’re right, though, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it over voicemail. It felt… wrong, no matter how ridiculous that sounds in hindsight. I mean, how would I even start that message? `Hey Jack, remember that one single time we slept together? Turns out you knocked me up with twins somehow. Anyways, call me back when you can find a free minute from assassinating that terrorist, thanks.’”

He’s sobbing again by the end of it, through bursts of desperate laughter, clutching at Sam’s hand with his right and at his bump with his left, nerves stretched thin with sleep deprivation. His friend once again proves why she’s an absolute treasure, keeping a tight grip on his hand as she snorts quietly and lets him cry himself out again, a blubbering and snotty mess on her passenger seat.

“Hey Mac”, she says quietly, several miles later on a stretch of empty dirt road, as he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. “We’re gonna find a way out of this mess, alright? You and me, we’ll bring you home. To Jack.”

She sounds so sure when she says it, matter-of-fact, enough to have Mac slumping against the window, muttering a quiet _thanks, Sam_ , as he drops off into a dreamless sleep where not even the body of an unknown assassin in Paris can reach him.

* * *

Riley meets their benefactor roughly four months and two weeks after Jack leaves on the Kovacs mission.

The Phoenix has been gradually shutting down for several days at that point, and officially she’s walking into a meeting to assist Matty and Oversight in laying out their in-field undercover operatives to the brass. Unofficially, her rig contains a list of names to be arrested instead, with pages upon pages of hard proof of their treason outlined, including some of the people in the room she’s about to walk into.  
  
Desi is standing by with Jack’s former personal tac team, as he likes to call them affectionately, each of their members handpicked and trained by the former Delta operative. Some of them he met in the desert several tours ago, others were earmarked by Army and covert ops recruiters.  
  
But not all of the agents wear simple black tactical gear; on at least half the vests, Riley reads a white, stitched logo that says _Spearhead_.

She knows immediately who she’s about to meet. If she were any less terrified for Mac, it might have her thinking twice, but Riley’s spent enough time skipping along the thin line of legality as a grey hat hacker that it doesn’t even elicit more than a passing thought.

She comes to a stop in front of their largest conference room in the sub-basement, where Matty and James are waiting with a tall bearded man, brown-haired and smartly dressed in a charcoal suit with a pink vest and tie. His hair is gelled back, and he wears an expensive gold watch on his wrist, but a single glance at his calloused hands that look so very much like Jack’s tells Riley all she needs to know.

Matty turns to look at Riley with an unreadable expression on her face, steel determination hardening her eyes. Oversight looks pale and frail, fraught with the effects of his illness and chemotherapy, but his hands are still, unlike the constant tremors she’s noticed in them ever since his son’s disappearance. She doubts even Jonah Walsh would come out on top of a fight with the man right now, physical limitations be damned.

It’s Russ who extends a broad hand to her, a tiny smile playing at his lips, and when he speaks his British accent takes Riley by surprise.  
  
“Russell Taylor, owner of Spearhead Operations”, he introduces himself in a smooth, deep voice. Riley takes his outstretched hand in a firm grip, refusing to be the first to break eye contact as she shakes it twice before letting go. “And you must be the infamous Miss Davis. You know, once upon a time you were on my shortlist for recruits.”  
  
She raises an eyebrow, eyeing him with a certain amount of skepticism. “Something tells me that ‘once upon a time’ that shortlist would’ve landed me in prison too”, she drawls, adjusting the black strap of her backpack on her left shoulder. “And that something is the full, unredacted file I’ve compiled on you and your activities over the past decade, Mr. Taylor.”  
  
His dark eyebrows fly up towards his hairline, and he looks at her with the same brand of impressed and somewhat terrified surprise that people always do. Then he grins, revealing a neat row of pearly white teeth, and tells her, “In that case, please call me Russ.”

Matty snorts in fond amusement, throwing a considering look at her own watch. “Well, now that we have the introductions out of the way, it’s ten o’clock. Let’s move, people.”  
  
She lets Taylor lead the way, followed by Riley herself and leaves James to close the door behind them. They take their places next to the big screen at their end of the room, and Riley unshoulders her bag to get out her tablet with the prepared documents.  
  
“Excuse me, what’s Russ Taylor doing here?”, one of the men seated close to the front calls out, frowning at their merry little band, mismatched as it is. Riley’s wearing her favorite leather jacket and ripped black jeans today, unable to fully drop the anti-authoritarian attitude that got her in so much trouble during her teenage years. Her hair is curled and wild, pinned back for convenience’s sake only, in case their crusade ends in a fistfight, juxtaposed with Russ’ impeccable suit, James MacGyver’s worn flannel and Matty’s usual business casual and cool, shark-like look.  
  
The same man in his thick, black-rimmed glasses stares at her boss disapprovingly, deepening the lines on his face. “I thought this was a mandatory logistics meeting on the Phoenix’ liquidation.”  
  
Riley only barely manages to tamp down on her laugh, looking out over the room with a sense of smug satisfaction. Of the roughly twenty-five people present, a little more than half will be leaving this room in cuffs, to be thrown into a maximum-security prison for committing treason against the United States. The other half will only narrowly avoid a similar process, and leave the Phoenix knowing the Foundation will be up and running for several more years.

Matty smiles, gesturing for Riley to pull up the first slide. “Oh no, Hank, I’m not here for a meeting – I’m here to clean house.”

* * *

It feels like a whole lifetime has passed since she first walked into the Phoenix Foundation fully expecting to be little more than a glorified baby sitter. Now, almost half a year past the best worst decision of her life, Desi watches intently as her well-trimmed fingernail hovers over the tiny call symbol on her phone screen.  
  
She’s leaning against the desk of the war room, completely empty of anyone but her as the rest of the team are busy handling the last transaction necessary to merge the Phoenix Foundation with Spearhead Operations. She supposes it might have made her nervous at any other time, but the really important meeting already concluded that morning. Anything beyond the issue she’s about to handle are formalities, as far as she’s concerned.

 _Oh, c’mon_ , she thinks to herself, _you sat through your entire chest piece in one session and punched out cold-blooded killers without batting an eye, Nguyen, this is child’s play._

Desi thinks of Riley, looking at her with steel behind pretty brown eyes. _I’d do anything to get Mac back_. Her thumb hits the screen, and then she’s lifting the phone to her ear.

_“Dalton, speak.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for clarification purposes timeline-wise (got a lil confused myself): the scenes with Mac are placed roughly around the 17 week mark, Russ joins the crew just before week 18, and desi makes the call several days after when the dust has settled, mid-19. if you want a comprehensible-ish overview on Tumblr for reference or smth I'm happy to do that <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S HERE!!!! FINALLY!!! the long awaited jack-chapter!!!
> 
> not much else to say, except thank you for reading and kudos-ing and commenting, love every single one of you <3

Jack spends the entire flight back to LA as if in a daze.

He still can’t quite believe that this is really happening, that he’s homebound on a Phoenix jet from Croatia only a little more than five months after leaving everyone he loved behind with the cold suspicion that he might never see them again. Part of him wants to fidget, wants to spring out of his seat and pace the length of the plane, but he can’t seem to be able to muster the energy. He’s going _home_.

Jack’s going home, and he’s going to see his family again, hold Riley and take her to pizza and skee-ball, annoy the hell out of Matty, throw around obscure movie references with Bozer, finally show Desi what a real car looks like, drive his baby, and- he’s going to see Mac again.

_God, Mac._

Jack regrets a lot of the things he’s done in his time, and after a certain amount of pain, he can’t even really bring himself to believe in the excuse of doing it for his country anymore. It works well enough on the good days, knowing that he’s done his part in ensuring that people like his family back home in Texas can go to sleep and wake up each morning a little safer, but on the days where all he sees are the bloodstains on his hands and the people that _won’t_ be waking up in the morning because of Jack any longer, the promise of distant patriotism and the American dream don’t keep him from putting a bullet in his head. It’s people like Mac who do, Mac and Riley and even Matty and Bozer.

That’s why Jack regrets the way he left more than anything, and for the first time in his life, isn’t sure what waits for him at home.

He can’t in good conscience expect Mac to just welcome him back with open arms, not after what happened the night before he left. He’d be lying if he said he regrets anything about it, regrets _Mac_ , but it made walking out that door so much harder than it’s ever been before.

Even just touching his hand, feeling his warm skin against Jack’s own, had almost been enough to make him commit treason and refuse the summons. Had Jack stood in his spot even a moment longer, or (god forbid) hugged Mac, that plane would not have left the tarmac.

And god, that touch almost did it, the feeling of Mac’s skin, his long, calloused fingers so very unlike Jack’s, gripping his hand like a lifeline, like he’d gripped Jack’s shoulders and hips only hours before, sky blue eyes glassy with tears as Jack broke both their hearts-

With a low, pained groan, Jack drops his face forward into his shaking hands, fingertips digging into his almost clean-shaven scalp so hard it hurts. He’s ruined, he’s ruined for anyone but Mac ever again, he can’t stop thinking of what it felt like, can’t stop hearing those four little words in that same breathy and tear-choked voice over and over again every single damn day. Sometimes he thinks he can still feel Mac’s hands on his neck, or ghosting across his cheek, or sliding down along the hard muscle of his body to dig into the flesh of his ass and press him closer, _deeper_.

Jack has always known that the day he discovered what holding Angus MacGyver in his arms felt like would be the day of no return. And it terrifies him, because if he touches down in LA only to find that Mac has reconsidered, if he has to look into those blue eyes and hear him say _I’m sorry, Jack, I just don’t feel the same way about you,_ something inside of him will break irreparably.

But maybe it already has, because just like so many times over the past five months, Jack can’t seem to keep the tears from sliding down his face.

* * *

_Hey Jack_ , Desi had said, only two days earlier, when he’d still believed that his foreseeable future would be spent hunting a monster he’d buried a decade ago. _Don’t ask how, but you’re coming home. Pack your bags, and don’t miss your flight._

Jack hadn’t quite been able to believe her. He’s not sure he believes her any more now, even as he’s walking down the empty corridors of the Phoenix Foundation, headed towards the war room.

It feels a little like an out of body experience, or a strange dream where everything is familiar but slightly _off_. He can’t put his finger on it, but something feels wrong, beyond the unusual desertion of an early Sunday morning. (Jack can’t remember the last time he registered days as something resembling a normal work week and not an ever-spinning wheel of intel meetings and ambushes.)

He can barely process a coherent thought beyond putting one foot in front of the other, the brief distance from the glass entrance seeming to stretch far longer than he remembers. But maybe that’s just the rushing sound of blood in his ears.

And then Jack turns the corner, looks up, and breaks into a dead sprint.

Both he and Riley are crying even before they touch, meeting her halfway outside the war room where she’d all but torn the door open and thrown herself into his arms. He closes them tightly around her waist to lift her up into the air, face buried in the wild curls of dark hair that fall over the side of her neck. She trembles like a leaf in the wind, but it’s okay, because Jack does too, reveling in the almost cutting sensation of her long nails digging into the back of his neck, her open palm a warm anchor on top of his skull. She’s sobbing incoherently into the air behind Jack’s ear as he spins her in a wide circle, inhaling the familiar smell of leather and citrus and _Riley_.

God, she’s real – she’s really _real_. Jack has his baby girl back in his arms, and the world finally makes sense again.

He sets her down carefully, loosens his death-grip on her waist as she leans back to touch violently shaking fingers to her tear-stained cheeks, hot with emotion. Jack frames Riley’s face in his hands, silently taking in her bloodshot, dark brown eyes, the gentle slope of her nose, her mouth hanging slightly open on harsh breaths and quiet sobs. She’s scanning his face so rapidly, like she needs to check every last detail, make sure that every wrinkle is still where it was before. It breaks his heart into a thousand pieces, and Jack suddenly has no idea how he made it four whole months without Riley.

“J-jack? Is it really you?”, she whispers, a fragile little thing, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to smile back at her through his tears.

“Yeah, Riles, it’s me – I’m back, baby girl”, he replies, in the same low whisper, and watches how her face screws up with a fresh wave of tears before he can’t take it any longer and tugs her against his chest, lets her cry herself out into the dark fabric of his nondescript black T-shirt. Jack strokes down along his daughter’s shaking back, eyes closed against his own tears, and lays his head gently on top of hers as he rocks them from side to side and lets Riley fist in the back of his shirt.

It takes a long while for the keening whimpers to subside, and Jack never once lets go of Riley until they do. He doesn’t notice Matty until he blinks tear-crusted eyes back open again either, standing in the door of the war room with a suspicious shine to her eyes, a sight so rare that he can probably count the number of times he’s witnessed it on one hand.

Riley steps back reluctantly, though she tangles the fingers of her right hand with his left and squeezes tightly, sniffling quietly as she wipes her free hand across her cheeks. Jack walks the last few steps up to one of his oldest friends hand-in-hand with his daughter, dropping to his knees to wrap her in the tightest one-armed-bear-hug the world has ever seen as Matty clutches back at him, a small sigh of relief leaving her body.

It lasts much longer than any of their previous embraces have, but it settles something coiled and nervous in Jack’s chest. When she leans back again, his voice sounds rough and cracked, but he can speak past the lump in his throat.

“Hey, boss lady. I missed you.”

Her lips twitch into a teary smile, and she squeezes at his right hand in an echo of Riley still clutching onto his left. “Hey, Jack. You have no idea how good it is to have you back.”

Chuckling wetly, Jack manages a lopsided grin, chest full to bursting except for the specially shaped hole whose sting comes back in full force. He’s so happy he could shout and dance and cry for the rest of the day, but no matter how uncertain things may be between them, he needs to see him now. He needs to hold Mac and never let him go again, like he should have in the first damn place. Jack can’t go back and change that now, but he can sure as all hell never make the same mistake again. “Thanks, Matty. Where’s the rest of the party? And Mac?”

The atmosphere changes as soon as the last word leaves his mouth. Familiar steel hardens Matty’s kind brown eyes, and Riley draws a sharp breath, opening up a cold pit of dread in Jack’s stomach all over again. He feels his spine straighten instantly, shoulders squaring back as he looks up at Riley and back at Matty again, voice low and dangerous. “Matty”, he says, slowly with a growing sense of panic, “What’s going on?”

There’s a note of something sad in her face, an undertone Jack can’t name for the life of him. He’s not even sure he wants to. When she speaks her voice is calm and soothing, as if she were talking to a caged animal. “A lot has happened in the past five months, Jack. I think it’s best if you sit down for this.”

_No, no, this can’t be happening – god, please no!_

His chest closes up with blind fear as he shoots to his feet, breath coming hard and fast with a great deal of difficulty. “Is he dead?!”, he demands, voice harsh and shaky, Riley’s hand trembling in his. He’s long since dropped Matty’s, who holds his gaze with calm determination. It doesn’t fit logically, and if Jack could think past the pounding of his heartbeat drumming in his ears, he’d know that. But he can’t. “Don’t lie to me, Matilda.”

_Because if Mac is dead, then so am I._

“ _No!_ Jack, no - he’s alive, but you should still sit. Come on.” His eyes flutter closed on a harsh exhale of pure relief, head swimming among what feels like clouds of cotton candy. His limbs feel like they’re made of jelly, only moving when Riley tugs gently at his hand to follow Matty to the armchairs in the middle of the room.

He sinks down into the chair up front on the right hand-side, Riley and Matty lining up in front of him. Jack’s fingers itch for something to fiddle with, a gun clip or-

Paperclip. A paperclip would be nice right about now.

“Jack”, Matty says, quiet and serious, doing nothing to abate the ever-growing swirl of darkness deep in Jack’s gut. He’s always trusted his instincts more than anything, and every single last one is screaming at him that this is all wrong, like they have been ever since Desi’s call two days ago. It was too good to be true, getting off the strike team like that. “Did you get any calls from Mac while on your mission?”

Caught off guard, Jack’s jaw drops as he sputters. “I’m- I don’t – I don’t know”, he admits quietly, shoulders slumping in defeat. Hot guilt burns behind his eyes, and he has to exert considerable effort to swallow around the cold lump in his throat. “I… I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we were ordered to stay dark the whole time. I muted everyone’s contacts except for you and Desi, and the only reason I didn’t get written up for treason was that everyone on the strike team turned a blind eye if I slipped away.”

Riley and Matty exchange a single look between them, a strange kind of understanding that only stokes the uncomfortable roiling in Jack’s stomach further, and then he can’t take it anymore. “Riley, Matty, what the hell is going on?”

Riley opens her mouth only to close it again, blowing out a sharp breath. “Before we start, I want you to know that none of this was your fault, Jack, okay? Things… they got complicated, and no one is to blame except for the monster responsible”, she emphasizes insistently. Jack feels a cold sweat start to break out at the back of his neck – Mac being alive is the bare minimum of safety, and a thousand other horrible things just as devastating could be the reason for his absence.

“After you left, Mac started to withdraw into himself, away from all of us”, Matty says quietly, drawing a sharp exhale from him. That’s exactly what he’d been afraid of, his partner curling into a protective shell and shutting the world out like he’s known to do even with Jack around. He admires Desi, he does, but she has neither Jack’s history with Mac nor his people skills. “I’m highly ashamed to admit just how much I underestimated his mental state - chalking it up to missing you and assuming that he’d get better with time. And he did adjust, somewhat, to Desi’s presence and our new situation, but then Mason happened.”

“Who’s that?”, Jack demands, already suspecting that he’s not going to like what he hears next. Riley answers with an expression of sour distaste, only solidifying the itch in Jack’s knuckles to pay this Mason person a visit.

“A former FBI-agent turned criminal that dabbles in domestic terrorism. He has an old grudge against Mac’s father and is scarily competent – I don’t know how much Desi told you about it, but he doxed us on the dark web and planted a car bomb in Oversight’s Jeep that almost took out Bozer.”

Jack shakes his head silently, momentarily struck speechless. This is, in fact, the first he’s heard of any of this, probably courtesy of Desi not wanting to distract him with worry about his team from the mission at hand. He understands the logic behind it, but nevertheless…

“What’s his problem with MacGyver senior?”, he rasps, voice thick with emotion already. Matty visibly hesitates, and that more than anything has Jack’s hackles rising in fear.

“He – Mason’s son, was an US army soldier, and died in a rescue mission in Afghanistan that James ordered”, Riley answers, unable to meet Jack’s gaze. “The… the captured soldier was Mac, and their whole team died in the process.”

Closing his eyes tightly against the onset of dizziness, Jack once again has to push down on the urge to cry. _Oh, Mac. Why didn’t you tell me? When did that happen? Before Peña, or after? Did I… did I aggravate a still healing injury when we first met?_

“I’m sorry, Jack, but that’s not the worst of it”, Matty says sorrowfully, voice thick like she’s struggling with her own tears. “About two months ago, he… he killed Charlie.”

 _“What?!”_ Jack’s eyes fly wide open, head spinning through numbing disbelief as he stares at them openmouthed. “Charlie as in – as in _our_ Charlie? As in _Robinson Charlie_?!”

Riley recounts the events to him through tears, and Jack suspects she’s leaving out the more gruesome details, but it’s horrifying enough on its own, a pure fucking tragedy and so goddamn senseless. Charlie is – _was_ – a good man, pointlessly caught up in someone else’s vendetta for revenge against a man he only met minutes before he died and knew nothing about.

“Fucking hell”, he breathes out, rubbing shaking hands over his tear-stained face when she’s finally finished with Mason escaping Phoenix custody. “ _Fuck_ , I – I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Jack”, Matty sighs, a suspicious shine to her eyes. Jack has an inkling that seeing it play out in real life must’ve been far more traumatic than Riley’s short and clipped version lets on, especially for people like them, people like Mac, who can’t help but try and save every single last person in need. “It really isn’t. And if you’d been here, I highly doubt you could’ve done anything to save him – it was a lose-lose from the get-go.”

Even so. Even so.

“I know, Matty”, he mumbles, hands fisting loosely on top of his knees. “I know, but – would’ve wanted to be there anyways.” A manicured hand, much smaller than his, covers his trembling fist, and when Jack looks up, he finds only understanding and compassion in Matty's brown eyes, knowing that she understands in a way only someone who’s been in that exact position a hundred times could.

“Okay, so – where is Mac now? Did he… did he take a leave of absence? Quit again?”, Jack asks carefully, not even bothering with an _‘is he okay’_.  
  
“Before we tell you that”, Matty ventures, in the same tone of voice she used when she’d told them about Jill’s death, “You should know that the corruption and infiltration for which Mason was responsible in the US government was much more severe than we initially anticipated, even after the disaster of Charlie’s death – so much so that they were going to disband the Phoenix Foundation, as they felt we’d become too compromised.”

“Don’t worry, though, that obviously didn’t happen”, Riley cuts in hurriedly, and Jack blows out a breath of pure relief. “I worked some magic and identified dozens of double-agents in multiple agencies, including most of the committee responsible for shutting us down. In exchange for not airing out their dirty laundry, they allowed us to be bought up by a third party, and bring you back in from the strike team.”

Jack’s smile is a weak, one, weighed down by the day’s revelations, but it’s there nonetheless. “’Course you did, baby girl”, he praises, heart clenching at the tiny quirk of lips Riley can’t quite suppress. “They didn’t stand a chance against you. So, if I’m getting this right, we’re doing the non-governmental shindig now? You’ll have to walk me through that later, but if it helped secure our jobs, I’m all for it. Now, please, what’s this got to do with Mac?”

“It’s… it’s the reason why we haven’t been able to look for him Jack”, Riley says lowly. “I’m sorry, but he’s been MIA since shortly after Charlie died.”

Somehow, out of all the possibilities, _this_ is the one Jack hadn’t expected. Injury, death, debilitating grief, maybe even a mental break – all of those had sounded plausible enough in his head, but Mac running away again? It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t make any _sense_.

“But – “, he’s grasping at straws, shaking his head and squinting at Riley and Matty. “Why? Why would he do that? I thought after Nigeria –“

“Nigeria was different, Jack”, Matty sighs, nodding at Riley who bends down to grab the thin brown paper folder lying on the coffee table that Jack hasn’t paid any attention to until just now. “He had… reasons. Reasons other than his father, with much more devastating consequences. And… I’m sorry.”

Riley holds it out to him with a look of deep upset, voice shaky when she speaks. “This should answer a lot of questions. Just… take a look.”

He accepts the folder reluctantly, throwing questioning glances at both of them only to be met with stony silence, and reaches inside to pull out its contents.

Jack blinks. He forgets the mechanics of taking a breath, the other two people standing in the room with him, where he is; even his own name becomes irrelevant background noise in that very moment. His entire world is sucked into a vortex of stillness where nothing exists but the image in front of him. Jack knows what he’s looking at immediately, although fitting the pieces together takes a little longer. It’s almost like there’s a temporary disconnect between Jack’s visual cortex and his eye, though he suspects that he simply doesn’t _want_ to read it black on white, doesn’t want his devastation to become rooted in fact.

“Riley”, he whispers after several long beats of horrified silence, _“Riley, what do you mean?”_

Movement at the edge of Jack’s vision indicates his daughter dropping to her knees in front of him, warm hands laying gently onto his knee. He doesn’t know which one of them is shaking, can’t feel most of his body anymore, nothing except the harsh pounding of his heart and the tearing, screeching _pain_. It hurts – it _hurts_ , so much, so much that Jack almost expects each beat to be his last, because surely no one can live through this kind of knowledge, surely Jack won’t be forced to go on, will wake up any second now to find that this was all a horrible dream-

“They’re mine. Aren’t they.”

It isn’t a question, not really, and yet it still somehow manages to knock him off his feet when Riley confirms it in a choked-up voice. He’s shaking his head, silent tears streaking down his cheeks, and something in him wants to curl up and shut his eyes against the burn, but Jack finds that he physically can’t take his eyes off the – _the ultrasound._

 _Jack. Jack, are you here-_ he thinks someone says, maybe Matty, though her voice sounds as indistinct and wobbly as Riley’s, just as unreal. None of this is real, it just can’t be. He’s rocking back and forth, moaning against the pain, one hand trembling and clenching against his mouth, a broken whimper escaping him when he reads the name at the top, _Angus MacGyver_ , the love of Jack’s life who’s carrying his children, lost somewhere in the world where Jack can’t reach him, five months pregnant with twins-

 _How big would his bump be right now?_ He wonders, trying to picture it in front of his mind’s eye, but every time he tries to recall the exact angle of his jaw, or the exact shade of blue of his eyes, it dissolves right back into smoke. _Was the morning sickness bad? Does his back hurt? Is he eating properly, getting all the extra nutrients? Did the babies kick yet?_

Jack’s aunt was pregnant with twins once – her third one, and tragically her only miscarriage. Multiple pregnancies are considered higher risk, he knows, and the thought makes him sick to the stomach.

“I need to find him.” It doesn’t sound like his own voice, and when he raises his gaze from the blurry shape of his children it doesn’t look like Matty’s or Riley’s faces either. Just two colorful blobs, like the monochrome ones in his hand.

“I know, Jack”, the Matty-blob says, gently, and it makes Jack want to scream. He can’t take gentle, he doesn’t deserve gentle, not as the deadbeat he is-

“So do we. But for now, I think you should go home.”

He blinks them back into focus, throat closing up in fear, because Mac is slipping through his fingers again, and every single second not spent looking for him is a second wasted, an opportunity for danger or disaster to befall him because Jack isn’t there to protect him. “No, no, you don’t understand, I _need_ -“

“You need to go _home_ , Jack, don’t make me tell you twice”, she interrupts, and admittedly he sounds crazed even to his own ears, but he’s coming apart at the seams. “I want to find him too, but we’ve been chasing shadows for more than two months now, and you’re our best shot. I need your absolute _best_ for this, Dalton, you hear me? So, go home, get it together, and then come back tomorrow. Please.”

It grates, goes against every single last instinct he has, but Jack can’t muster the strength to argue with Matty, not like this. And not when she has a point. So he closes his eyes, releases a long breath, and opens them again on a nod, unable to speak just yet. His friend tilts her head in reply, her face just as crushed. They’re in this together.

“I’ll drive you home”, Riley offers quietly, the last push Jack needs to tear him out of that swirling dark abyss, even if only temporarily. He can feel it lurking at the back of his mind, knows it won’t leave until Mac is back with him, until he’s safe and sound in Jack’s arms. He unclamps weak fingers from the grainy image to squeeze at her hand gratefully, unable to quite summon up a smile, even a forced one.

He’s about to push himself out of his seat to see if his legs will hold him even if he can’t really feel them when another thing catches his attention. Clearing the lump in his throat, Jack voices his thoughts in a tear-roughened voice. “Uh… about this. Can I…?” He trails off into nothingness, gesturing with the ultrasound and paper folder still in his right, mind still swirling with a million questions and uncertainties, of which this is the most immediately solvable one. Maybe the only, Jesus Christ.

“Of course, Jack, don’t be ridiculous”, Matty tells him, brown eyes twinkling sadly. “It’s yours.” _They’re yours._

She doesn’t have to say it for all of them to hear.

* * *

Jack spends most of the car ride home in Riley’s jeep in a silent daze, frantically thumbing through the remaining pages of medical information. A piece of his heart shatters into a million shards with every new line of text, and an actual whimper tears out of his mouth when he gets to the last recorded visit on the day of Charlie’s death – gassed, Mac was fucking _gassed._ He must’ve felt so alone-

He’s already got his phone halfway out his pocket, about to unlock and unmute everything he hasn’t gotten around to when Riley stops him. “Don’t do that.”

He throws a quick glance over at her, eyes still fixed on the road in front of them as she pulls through a tricky intersection. His thumb still hovers across his screen, and he can’t help but think how grown-up she looks right then. What a strange moment to have that thought, considering the shit they’ve been through together.

“I’m serious, Jack, don’t do it to yourself”, Riley repeats quietly, turning a corner and looking over at him for an instant before her eyes drop back to the road. Jack laughs brokenly, more of a sob than anything else. “I – I just… I need to know”, he answers, with a frantic edge to his voice. “I need to know how many calls I missed, Riles, how many _chances-_ “

“It’s not your fault”, his little girl insists, firm and sure of herself, and somehow it hurts worse than ever before right then, because even if she believes her words, Jack simply can’t. He’s never felt more undeserving of her faith in him, like more of a failure, even through their long years of estrangement.

“I mean it – I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, alright? And trust me when I say that the only person to blame for any of this is that bastard Elliot Mason.” Riley takes a shaky breath before she continues, visibly blinking away tears even from the passenger seat. “I felt… so guilty, for my part in it. And I know what you’re gonna say – the same thing I’ve been telling you. I hear you, I do, and I’m sorry anyways. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s not my fault, even if I could’ve done some things differently.”

“Riley-“, Jack says quietly, already feeling salty tears streaking down along his cheeks again. She shakes her head, lips pressed together in a tight white line. “It’s not – I should’ve seen it coming, you know? Things haven’t been right for a long while, and we all could’ve picked up on the signs. I can’t help but feel like if maybe I’d insisted, if I hadn’t pushed so hard for you and mom to get back together, maybe – maybe he would’ve trusted me to help. We all knew Mac doesn’t talk about things, and we should’ve put our foot down sooner. Nigeria was only the lead-up to this.”

Jack’s head thumps back against the headrest, and he stares at the grey concrete street with an empty gaze, watches the white street markings be swallowed up at the bottom of the windshield. It looks strange, he notes, the way the curvature of the glass distorts the straight lines – Mac could’ve probably explained why, along with detailed calculations.

“You’re right”, he says quietly, eyes dropping back to the ultrasound in his lap. He hasn’t been able to put it back into the paper folder. It feels like a betrayal, somehow. “I’m not gonna lie and pretend like I feel any less guilty than I did a moment ago, or that I think you carry any of it, but – well. We should’ve talked a lot sooner, instead of just falling all over each other and going radio silent. Ain’t never done anybody any good.”

Riley giggles wetly, and it takes him back to when she was twelve and thought of Jack’s Texan twang as the funniest thing in the world. He feels a pull in his chest as he thinks of his baby girl a lifetime ago, wondering whether he’s about to have another baby girl or two just like her in a few short months.  
  
“We’ll make up for it when we get him back. I promise you, Jack”, she says, once the giggles have tapered off. Jack’s mind doesn’t quite settle, but it does feel just the tiniest bit lighter – it won’t when he’s trying to fall asleep tonight, but Riley has that effect on people.

They continue riding in comfortable silence, until they’re just a few blocks out from Jack’s apartment.

“So”, he ventures, feeling a little guilty for the way he’s completely neglected to ask about Riley herself, and wanting to lighten the mood, “how have _you_ been, munchkin? You and that Billy fella still doin’ alright?”

Riley’s face pulls into a pained grimace, and Jack’s heart drops back into his stomach.

_Oh no, I’m gonna have to go down to Georgia and whoop some bounty hunter ass, aren’t I?_

* * *

When Riley finally unlocks the door to her apartment again, it’s well past midnight and she feels like she could simultaneously sleep a thousand years or never again.

Her entire body is one big, heavy block of emotion, mostly worry for… well, far too many people, really. She left Jack at his place, if only at his request; citing the need to do some processing on his own. She could see the guilt in his eyes, even if she pretended not to.

Riley drops her keys into the bowl just by her front door, shuffling into the living room with an exhausted sigh. Water, toilet, sleep, in that order – the shower will have to wait for tomorrow if she doesn’t want to brain herself on its tiles.

She doesn’t see the dark figure lurking on her couch until it speaks up, sending Riley several feet into the air with a loud yelp before she crouches into a defensive stance. “How’d it go?”

Heart still hammering into her throat, Riley drops her fists with a low groan, aiming a sloppy hit at the light switch and blinking against the sudden brightness. “Jesus _Christ_ Desi, what were you doing in the dark like that?! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Brushing a stray tendril of black hair behind her ear, the beta grins at her, all teeth and twinkling mischief. “Honestly? I fell asleep waiting for you. Sorry.”

Riley snorts in exhausted laughter, trudging over to drop onto the couch next to her and folds her legs underneath herself. Desi mimics her by leaning back into the cushions. From up close like this, Riley can see how exhausted she looks, stomach squeezing guiltily. She _did_ take a pretty long time getting home, even if she hadn’t known that Desi would wait for her; then again, she should probably have expected something exactly like this.

“About as well as you’d expect”, she mumbles, rubbing her left palm across her eyes tiredly. “He’s absolutely devastated. I was almost afraid to leave him alone, but… he asked for some time.”

Exhaling shakily, Desi closes her dark eyes against a wave of emotion crossing her face. It still feels strange sometimes, witnessing the other woman so open around her – but they’ve grown a lot closer over the past few months, brought together by their hunt for Mac, closeness with Jack, and something else that makes Riley mildly nauseous to think about.

“No one’s to blame, Dez”, she says quietly, a bitter smile playing at her lips at the irony of it all – so they keep telling each other, while secretly blaming themselves. What a sight they must be. “No one except Mason, and maybe how shit we all are at talking about things, including Mac. This was building long before you ever joined the team.”

Desi manages a weak smile, eyes dropping back onto her jeans-clad knees. Riley’s chest twitches painfully, needing to lessen the weight on her shoulders.

“He tried asking after Billy, at the end”, she grins, back arching as her spine cracks and pops satisfyingly. “Almost popped a blood vessel when I told him.”

It draws a real smile from Desi, this time, one that shows her gums and the single dimple on her left cheek. “And you told Jack that we’ve got dibs on egging Billy-boy’s house, I hope?”, she declares, lifting her right leg up onto the couch to poke at Riley’s shin with a sock-clad foot.

Riley’s eyebrows quirk in surprise, laughing as she swats at her friend’s foot, catching the bare skin of her ankle in a tight grip. She’s tempted to tickle her sole, but Desi’s got a mean kick and deeply ingrained reflexes, not to mention that cracked bones suck major ass. “We do?”

Rolling her eyes playfully, Desi scoots her butt further down on the couch to wedge her foot into Riley’s lap, who immediately shifts to make it a more comfortable stretch. “’Course we do, Riles. He should’ve thought twice about whose heart to break.”

Riley has to blink against the faint burn in her eyes, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. It hurts, thinking about Billy, because all things considered it hasn’t been that long since they broke things off and Riley hasn’t had the time to properly process her feelings on the matter; she’s been betrayed by the people she loves and trusts too many times already, and to have misjudged him so badly injured her pride as much as anything else. But between Desi’s almost magical ability to make her smile and all the excitement around Mac, she’s realized just how little he really figured into her life after all, how she doesn’t really think of him all that often.

And right now, the hurt is still there, but decisively overshadowed by warmth blooming in her chest.

The silence between them stretches comfortably, until Riley’s jaw cracks open on a deep yawn, and Desi sits up to slap her open palm against a pillow. “Alright, bedtime for you, young lady. I can see all the way into your stomach from here.”

Riley giggles, rolling her eyes playfully. “That’s not even – you know what, I’m too tired to argue that. You wanna crash here? I’d worry less if you didn’t drive home in the dark.”

With an easy smile, Desi gives a curt nod, reaching back to undo her ponytail and shake out silky black strands. It makes her look much softer, especially with how messy her hair is after an entire day of being kept back. “Your couch is a lifesaver, Riles. I’ll take that offer gladly.”  
  
Swallowing down her nervousness, Riley steels herself what she’s about to say next. It feels like the most natural thing in the world, but still… “C’mon, don’t be ridiculous. My bed’s a queen-size, more than enough space for both of us.”

Desi’s jaw drops open in momentary surprise, dark eyes blinking up at Riley. For a single tense moment, she almost thinks she’s made a terrible mistake – until the wonder on Desi’s face melts away into a playful smile, and she raises her arms, bending her elbows. “Oh, I dunno – have you seen these guns? Might not fit after all.”

Throwing her head back on a giggle, Riley pushes herself to her feet, watching with fond amusement how Desi flexes her biceps, shoulders bunching underneath her white T-shirt.

No, it’s too early to tell just yet, too early to name – but Riley knows now that Billy Colton won’t get the best of her after all, not with people like Desi and Jack in her corner. And Elliot Mason won’t get the best of Mac, either.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a horrible person but u all love it. here u go ur macdalton angst fix <33
> 
> in this chapter we meet Lizzy, my personal version of Sam's sister; when she mentions (Re)Becca she's referring to Sam with her real name, or at least what I've decided it is. she's gonna feature heavily in the next few chapters, so look forward to that. enjoy the chapter!

_The night before his entire life changes, Jack waits alone in his apartment, staring at his father’s dog tags._

_Excepting those strange years of not-quite-estrangement, he’s always considered his pops the best source of advice. After his first tour in the Army, it’d been Jack Sr. who’d sat with him through long nights of flashbacks and panic attacks, quietly and without judgement but always there to support him when he finally asked for it. When he’d run himself ragged trying to figure out a way to connect with Riley underneath the shadow of her violent deadbeat father, it’d been Jack Sr. who’d told him to let her come to him of her own volition, show her what kind of man he was through consistent actions. When he’d finally returned from Afghanistan with a quirky blond EOD tech in tow who couldn’t shut up for the life of him, well… Jack Sr. had already been dead by then, but he sure as hell had made sure to visit the old man, introduce him to the new bettering influence in Jack’s life._ Carryin’ on the tradition of keepin’ me sane, he is, _he’d told his pops._ Jus’ like you, if a lil’ more yappy. An’ he don’t smoke nearly as much _._

_Looking at the metal lettering now, Jack wishes more than ever that his father were still here. Maybe he’d know what to do, because Jack sure as hell doesn’t._

_The door creaks open, immediately pushed back closed as the newcomer engages the lock. Silence reigns for a tense few seconds, before a low, tight voice breaks it. “You’re going, aren’t you.”_

_Jack’s entire frame sags with the power of his sigh, and for a moment, he lets his head drop forward, eyes squeezed tightly shut against the barrage of emotions that want to overwhelm him. Then, he gently places the dog tags back into their cigar box on the coffee table and stands up._

_“Don’t have much of a choice, hoss”, he rasps, turning to face his pa- former partner, he supposes. God, just the thought of it smarts – but what’s almost worse is the sight of him._

_Mac stands in the middle of his living room, in his worn leather jacket and white henley, nostrils blown wide on harsh, uncontrolled breaths. Jack knows that even if he’d run all the stairs up to his apartment, it wouldn’t have made him pant like that; no, combined with the tight set of his mouth and his bloodshot blue eyes, he has an inkling as to what might be the cause._

_“I could-“, Mac starts, and god, Jack hates the tremble of his voice with a passion. He shouldn’t sound like that, not Mac – not cool, collected, suave Mac._

_“You could get yourself arrested for treason, man, that’s what you could”, he cuts through his desperate attempt at finding a solution, heart clenching even as he does. He wants so much to just give in, let that big brain find a way out like he undoubtedly would, maybe even go on the run in some Bonnie-and-Clyde fashion, but the fact of the matter is that Jack’s being recalled, and he took an oath to follow. That’s not even starting on the fact that every second monsters like Tiberius Kovacs coexist in this world with people like Mac is a second too many. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do this time. This one ain’t got a last-minute miracle you can pull off.”_

_A fire burns behind Mac’s blue eyes, rage and disbelief and devastation all at once; he turns his face away from Jack, the sharp cut of his jaw clenching firmly along with his fists. It’s devastatingly beautiful, made all the more so by the tears Jack can see pooling in the corner of his eyes._

You dirty, horrible old man, _he thinks silently, even if he can’t stop the swooping of his stomach._ See him crying and all you can think of is how handsome he is. That’s sick, Dalton.

_Mac’s mouth opens only to close again, blowing out a harsh breath. His teeth must be grinding together with how hard he’s clenching his jaw, and that alone has Jack stepping in – he’s all for ‘feel don’t suppress’, but not when his partner is hurting and he can do something about it._

_“’m sorry, Mac”, he says quietly, stepping around his couch and forcing himself to a stop in front of him. God, what is it with him and these stupid feelings today – usually he has a better handle on himself than a teenage alpha experiencing their first rut. But today, being so close to Mac is like a physical blow, pain only to be eased by one thing. The one thing he can’t allow._

_“I really am. I hate everything about this man, but – you’ll be fine without me, you’ll be alright. You’ve got Riley, Matty and Bozer, and an old friend o’mine that’s comin’ to watch your back. You’ll like her a lot, she’s a real spitfire-“_

_“I won’t”, Mac squeezes out, past the audible lump in his throat, still not looking at Jack. He feels shivers travel down his spine, though he can’t be entirely sure of what; it’s a horrible thought, but at the same time, Jack can’t deny that Mac needing him stokes something dark and possessive deep inside of him._

_“You’re wrong, I won’t – I won’t be okay, and I’m sure your friend’s amazing, but she won’t be you, Jack”, Mac blubbers, the words sounding like they barely make it out of his mouth. He’s fidgeting nervously, eyes flitting across everything in the room but Jack. “I can’t – I can’t lose you, a-and I know that’s shitty and hypocritical of me after-“_

_Jack can’t take it any longer, wraps firm arms around his partner faster than he can consciously think to do, drawing Mac’s shaking frame tightly against his own. He feels so strangely fragile and firm against him, all lean muscle and emotional vulnerability as he gasps wetly and fists in the back of Jack’s T-Shirt._

_“None a’ that, hoss”, he whispers into soft blond strands covering Mac’s right ear, doing his best to ignore the warmth he can feel spreading out over his shirt where he’s got his face pressed tightly into Jack’s shoulder. “C’mon now, I don’t wanna hear another self-disparaging sentence outta you for the rest of the night, hmm? Ain’t got the time for that.” As if there’s ever a time where Jack won’t feel something break inside of him at the sound of Mac talking about himself like that._

_Mac takes a shuddering breath against his shoulder, nodding jerkily as he lets Jack hold him close. It’s much longer and more intimate than what they’d usually do, but Jack can’t bring himself to care, not right then. Not when this might be the last time he gets to hold the love of his life who has no idea how hard it is too control the pounding of his heart just at breathing in his clean, familiar musk._

_Slowly, Mac starts to lean back again, lifting his head off Jack’s shoulder. He can already feel his chest closing up, each breath coming more labored than the last as he realizes that he’ll have to let go any second now. But he can’t seem to unclamp his fingers from Mac’s side and back, can’t-_

_Can’t breathe, chest stuttering to a halt as he realizes how close their faces are hovering together. Close enough that he can feel the heat of Mac’s breath puff out over his skin, close enough that he can count each speckle and capillary in those crystal-clear blue eyes-_

_Jack doesn’t know who moves first, only that suddenly he can feel something soft and warm against his lips, a tear-wet tip of a nose nuzzling against his cheek. Mac’s mouth moves tentatively against his own, slightly chapped but oh-so-perfect, every bit as overwhelming as Jack had dared dream about._

_The skin of their lips clings together for another moment, even as they both draw back with heavy gasps, the sensation strangely intimate and erotic at the same time. Jack feels as dizzy and disoriented as if he’d stepped off a rollercoaster with ten consecutive loops, and the entire room behind Mac spins exactly like that._

_“I – I didn’t… I didn’t know you-“, Mac stutters, blinking rapidly like he always does when solving a particularly difficult problem. Heat fizzles along Jack’s limbs pleasantly, like a stray bolt of electricity delivered straight from Mac’s skin into his own that leaves his lips tingling still.  
  
“I do”, he rasps, suddenly starkly aware of the faint blush dusting Mac’s cheeks and the dark dilation of his pupils. “I want so much, Mac, you have no idea. I have – I have for a very long time.”_

_Mac’s jaw slackens, entire face painted in beautiful surprise that’s heart-wrenching at the same time, as if he just can’t wrap his head around the fact that Jack would want him, when Jack can’t wrap his head around the idea that he possibly couldn’t. His fingertips flex against the small of Jack’s back before he releases a long breath, digging them in to press his hips into Mac’s own._

_“So do I”, he whispers, lips brushing against Jack’s, who moans loudly at the shock of sheer electricity that cracks through his body. “Jack, please, I want –_ Jack _, I want you. I love you.”_

_Jack was lost the second Mac said his name like that, and the rest of his self-control snaps like an old, brittle rubber band. He starts pulling at Mac’s clothes, slides his leather jacket off his shoulders as he presses broken sobs into his skin, breathless declarations of love. Some rational, clear-headed part of his brain beats frantically against the inside of his skull, whisper-shouting how horrible of an idea this is, spontaneously making love to his partner the day before he leaves on a potentially fatal mission, but…_

_But it gets lost in the drumming beat of Jack’s heart, pounding alongside Mac’s._

* * *

“-so I’ll just input these IDs and run a search for any use over the span of the last couple months. Travel, transactions, bookings – if anything’s even remotely connected to any of them, we’ll know about it, starting with LA and branching out as need be”, Riley says, her eyes never even once leaving her computer screen as her fingers fly over her keyboard with a speed that’s almost dizzying to watch. Jack exchanges a fond smile with Matty from his position behind Riley’s chair in the war room, chest swelling with pride at how competent his little girl is. A little scary, sometimes.

Knowing that there’s nothing for him to do but wait on Riley’s program to do its magic, Jack clears his throat and asks the question that has been on his mind all night – or one of them, at least, he’s had a lot of time to think what with not being able to sleep. He hadn’t even been able to enter his bedroom, the ghost of Mac’s outline against his sheets opening the floodgates of his memories and keeping him awake for hours. Jack has a feeling he won’t be able to truly rest for some time yet.

“So, what about Oversight? What’s going on there?” He still isn’t sure how to feel about James MacGyver as a whole, but what with Jack fathering the man’s grandchildren and the whole disaster around it, he feels that he at least owes it to him to ask after his wellbeing. Or lack thereof, judging by the way Matty’s face shutters.  
  
“I’m afraid that the stress of Mac going missing and being pregnant haven’t helped James’ situation at all”, she says quietly, eyes heavy with regret and something that almost has Jack’s eyebrows going up, a reflex he thankfully tamps down on just in time. Not the most appropriate timing to needle his friend about any potential crushes. “Chemotherapy was going alright at first, but then a few days ago he passed out from exhaustion in his office. His doctors decided it’d be in his best interest to keep him as a stationary patient for the time being.”

Blowing out a harsh breath, Jack closes his eyes momentarily to digest the news. He may not like or even tolerate the man all that much but looking at the whole situation from his point of view is nothing short of horrific. Plus, he can sympathize more than he’d like, in this instance.

 _Guess that answers the question if we’ll ever get a break_ , he thinks cynically. Out loud, he quietly tells Matty how sorry he is, which she accepts with a single nod, staring distantly into the space between them. She was trained not to break under the strain of fires all over the place, but this might just be too much to ask of anyone.

Jack’s just about to cross the room and give her the hug they both desperately need when movement at the edge of his vision catches his attention; an involuntary smile, weak as it is, tugs at his lips when he looks up and sees that it’s Bozer, Leanna and Desi making their way towards the war room.

Bozer is the first to rush through the door, and despite the horrible circumstances, Jack can’t help the way his smile widens into a grin as soon as he’s tackled into a tight hug.

“Hey, man! It’s so good to see you again – you have no idea”, he exclaims, bright and Bozer-like, something Jack missed dearly in his five months away.

“Pleasure’s all mine, brother”, he rumbles back, slapping his back jovially and snorting at the exaggerated little yelp he gives. Leanna only pulls him into a light hug, greeting him with a more subdued, “Good to have you back.”

And then there’s Desi, who looks both exactly and nothing like she did the last time Jack saw her, some – what, two years ago? Jesus Christ. Still with that adorable little scowl and black hair, all limbs attached, which isn’t as self-explanatory as it should be with her. The _stories_ Jack could tell.

She visibly hesitates, eyes flitting across the room in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness, raising Jack’s eyebrows almost into his hairline. He remembers her as less awkward, that’s for sure, but then again he spent close to a decade handling the most socially awkward nerd there ever could be.

Arms spread wide in invitation, Jack stares at her expectantly. “C’mon, Dez, don’t be ridiculous. Bring it in for ol’ Jackie.”

And she does, but not before Jack catches the tiny twitch of the corners of her lips. Whatever’s got her all twisted and riled up, they’ll figure it out.

The momentary won peace doesn’t last, because of course it doesn’t, cut short by Riley’s low, panicked exclamation of, “Guys? You need to see this.”

Releasing Desi from his hold, Jack straightens up immediately, fighting hard to keep down his nervousness at the pitch of her voice. He crowds closely behind her chair next to Desi as a hush falls over the room.

“According to my search program, Mac boarded a flight to Paris the day he vanished using the Dubois identity that Jack gave me”, Riley explains, pulling up a passport scan on the big screen. Jack has to remind himself to breathe for several seconds through the intense sting in his chest that comes with seeing Mac’s face. His hand clenches in the back of Riley’s chair, leather creaking ominously before Bozer’s voice tears him out of his spiral.

“Wait a minute, is he wearing prosthetics? His jaw doesn’t look right.”

Swallowing heavily, Jack nods, repeating what he’d just told Matty and Riley a few minutes ago. “Your prosthetics, actually. Works great for fooling facial rec by changing the bone structure it scans for.” When he turns his head, the look on Bozer’s face is an interesting mix of pride and horror, a feeling Jack understands all too well, unable to fully turn off the voice that notes what a testament to Mac’s skill as an operative this is.

And then Riley drops the next bomb on them. “I found an apartment in Paris that runs under his name, as well as something else – a warrant for arrest from local authorities dated about three weeks ago.”

Jack flinches, only barely manages to catch the gasp that wants to tear out of his mouth; from the sound of it, Leanna doesn’t quite manage, and Matty closes her eyes momentarily before turning back to the police report that appears on the screen, followed closely by a document with the translation into English next to it, every word cutting deeper into Jack’s heart. His head starts to spin, a never-ending loop of _unidentified male_ and _eleven stab-wounds_ and _loaded firearm-_

“What, they’re saying Mac did this?”, Desi demands, and Jack thinks he could probably feel the tension and rage roiling off her if he were standing five floors away. Riley’s fingernails clack over her keyboard while she absentmindedly murmurs out a confirmation. “Hold on, I have pictures from the crime scene-“

Jack immediately, viscerally wishes he’d never seen them, that he could erase the images displayed on the big screen from his mind again. There’s blood, so much blood, all over the dark wooden floor and what looks to be a kitchen counter pictured, splattered across the black-clad body of a dark-haired mountain of a man, eyes staring emptily up at the ceiling from every angle. And the knife-

Jack blinks sluggishly, thoughts slow and hard to reach as if he were stumbling through a fog, tongue and lips clumsily forming the words he means to say. “Is he – did he –“

“The working theory is that it was in self-defense, due to the other injuries found on the body and the discarded, fully loaded firearm underneath the curtains”, Riley reads out, a decidedly shaky note to her voice that would’ve had Jack acting to comfort her immediately under any other circumstances, but he can’t seem to muster the presence of mind to do anything but stare right now. Of all the things he’d expected, all the things he’d feared, this wouldn’t have placed even in the top fifty.

“They couldn’t identify the body, didn’t find any ID or electronics on scene”, she adds, hands clutching onto the sides of her laptop so hard it turns her knuckles white and bloodless.

“Hitman, probably, and Mac was smart enough to get rid of anything that would put this into any secret service’s hands and eventually trace back to us”, Desi murmurs, crossing her arms against her ribcage. “Can you find anything after that?”

Jack doesn’t really expect any different, both because he knows what he would do faced with the same situation and after how things have been going so far, any light at the end of the tunnel would be too good to be true. Still, it stings when Riley confirms his suspicions; after that night, he dropped off the grid completely, and the Dubois trail went cold.

It’s exactly what one would expect, save for one thing; something in the back of his head, a piece that doesn’t fit…

“Alright, this just got a lot more complicated”, Matty sighs, turning around to give them all the direction they’re waiting for. “I’ll check in with French authorities while you get yourselves to Paris, there’s got to be a trail somewhere. Mac may have tossed the phone and ID, or he left them for us to find; either way, it’s worth checking out. Riley, you stay here, I want a complete list of any and all activities connected to the name Dubois. Especially bank transfers and withdrawals, that would be an important course of action for someone on the run. Now go.”

Bozer and Leanna are already halfway out the door when it clicks into place, Jack’s eyes widening in realization from where he’s still rooted to the spot and staring at the dead man’s face that seemed so disturbingly familiar.

“Wait!”, he exclaims, arm raised to point at the screen as the wheels turn in his head. “That’s – I know who he is!”

* * *

Five months into pregnancy, Mac has never felt more consciously in sync with his body. There’s an awareness of its mere existence now that is entirely novel; fascinating, in a way. Really annoying, most of the time.

“I mean, you don’t really give much thought to the integrity of your ankles until they’re swollen to the size of oranges and won’t fit in any of your shoes”, he grumbles, tossing his apple into the air to catch it again in his other hand, eyes squinting out across the driveway at Sam’s silver Mercedes. He’s snuggled comfortably in both floral porch swing cushions and one of Sam’s woolen cardigans, but try as he might, he can’t seem to get comfortable. Or sleep lying down, for the past week now.

Over the sound of faint rustling, his companion snorts next to him on the swing. The familiar scratch of highlighter sliding across paper is followed by a page being turned, before Lizzy closes the cap back over her pen with a quiet _clack_. “They’re not quite so bad, sweetheart. Clementines, maybe.”

Mac’s lips quirk into a smile, hips shifting to try and alleviate some of the pressure in his lower back. When he looks over at her, Sam’s sister is grinning at him, thirty-page dossier lying face-down in an open textbook on her crossed legs. He stretches his slipper-clad feet as far in the air as his sore thighs will allow, wiggling them against the cool morning air. “Well, it’s not like I’d know, I can’t even see them most of the time.”

Looking at Elizabeth Jones’ carefree laugh and twinkling green eyes, Mac can see the stark resemblance to her sister. The cut of her jaw, her eyes, lip shape and brows all strongly remind him of Sam, even if that is where the physical similarities end. Unlike her older sister, Lizzy’s hair is a dark, chestnut brown, kept at chin-length. She wears light grey, rounded glasses, and her nose is broader than Sam’s, face and frame softer owing to the absence of a military lifestyle. Lizzy never had to learn how to hold and fire a gun, and the only callouses on her hands were caused by pens. She has all of Sam’s psychological qualifications but uses them for grief counselling instead of federal interrogations.

“You know, Mac”, she yawns, carefully shutting her book before stretching her sweater-clad arms over her head in a long, bone-cracking stretch, “I used to think pregnancy was this wonderful, magical experience. And then I took a seminar on it in the fourth semester of my Bachelor’s. I don’t envy you those hormones at all.” She sags into the swing, shoulders slumped as she pushes her glasses back from where they’d slid almost to the tip of her nose.

Mac shudders, thinking back to two days ago when he’d spent half an hour crying because he’d watched a documentary on the Discovery channel that had featured the Greek mathematician Archimedes, which had then led to him thinking about his childhood dog Archimedes, which had then led to a crying fit because of what a good boy he’d been. And then, of course, he’d eaten his weight in apples, the latest feature in a long row of pregnancy cravings.  
  
Placing his left hand against the prominent swell of his belly, Mac blows out a quiet sigh. Joint pain, mood swings, insomnia and strange food cravings – it’s only the beginning of a very long list of complications he hadn’t given more than a passing thought five months ago. But then again, five months ago he’d also been utterly unaware of the sheer depth of love his heart was capable of. And how much he could worry about seemingly mundane things.

“Yeah, well, the things you do for your children”, he murmurs, stroking the ridge of his thumb across his bump lovingly. It’s a bittersweet sight every time, fraught with wonder at the knowledge that his body is carrying and creating life and stinging pain at how much he wants to see another set of hands cupping his stomach.

The silence drags on until Mac blinks himself out of his reverie, glancing back up to catch Lizzy’s thoughtful gaze. Heat grows in his cheeks, and he smiles bashfully, voice rough with emotion when he speaks. “Sorry, got lost in thought there.”

Tilting her head, Lizzy only smiles softly, extending her left hand to clasp around Mac’s cool fingers against his stomach and squeezes tightly. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he squeezes back, trying desperately to keep a hold on the burning in his eyes.

“You know, Becca and I are here for you”, she whispers, voice low and gentle as if she were sharing a hefty secret between the two of them. Her eyes drop to where their hands rest against his stomach, and her smile grows wider. “All three of you.”

That’s when Mac feels it; a strangely fluttery rippling sensation, faint and barely there against the inside of his stomach. He almost misses it entirely, so caught up in the heaviness of his emotions that physical sensations fade into the background, but then it happens a second time, and he freezes.

Mouth dropping open in pure, unaltered wonder, he stares down at his baby bump, still holding onto Lizzy’s manicured hand, completely failing to register her worried exclamation of his name, because that felt like – that has to be –

Untangling his fingers from his friend’s, Mac tears the hem of his grey shirt out of his sweatpants, dragging it up to expose his stomach to the cool morning air; for a long, tense moment, nothing else happens, and all he can see is the stretch of his skin, his slightly protruding navel, Lizzy straightening up next to him and leaning forward with a hitch in her breath…

And there it is. A tiny, unmistakable movement in his skin, right at the top of his bump, an indentation caused by one or maybe both of his babies moving inside of him. Mac feels the wet slide of a tear streaking across his left cheek.

“Oh my god”, Lizzy whispers, hovering just next to his right shoulder. “Mac, that’s – they’re kicking!”

Mac laughs shakily, apple lying forgotten on the swing cushions between them, watching transfixed as he slowly raises his right hand to his stomach. “Y-yeah, I know – well, I don’t actually know if it’s a kick, it could be their fists or an elbow too”, he wonders distantly, and then stops talking altogether when his fingers connect with the tiny bulge in his stomach, feeling for the first time a direct, visceral connection to one of his children. He’s crying, can’t string a coherent thought together anymore, only gasp in amazement when it shifts against his fingertips, before the ripple vanishes again, leaving only smooth skin.

It takes Mac long seconds that feel more like years to stop the hitching of his breath, and even then he can’t do anything to stop the tears from coming. His cheeks feel sore with the strength of his smile, completely lost for words to describe the sheer range of emotions crashing in on him.

A shadow falls across his vision, and when he looks up Sam stands in front of him, wearing faded jeans, a black button-down and the widest smile he’s ever seen on her. Mac hadn’t even heard her open the door and join them on the porch, too caught up in the joy of feeling his child move for the first time.

Chuckling wetly through his tears, Mac bites lightly at his bottom lip before greeting her in a choked-up voice. “Good morning, Sam.”

She blinks, eyes flitting between his face and bump momentarily, before squeezing gently at his shoulder and dipping her head. “Morning, Mac. Was that-“

“-the babies moving? Exactly, and – oh my god, Becca, it happened so quickly, out of _nowhere-_ “, Lizzy babbles, cheeks flushed in excitement as she gestures wildly with her right hand. Mac laughs, a bright and carefree sound that sounds almost strange in his voice.

Gripping at his upper arm tightly, she almost bounces out of her seat with how her entire body seems to vibrate in excitement. “Tell me everything! How did it feel? Can you tell if it’s a fist or foot? What about the other one?”, she demands with an infectious twinkle in her eyes. Mac stutters, pressing his hands closely against his stomach, chest light and airy with happiness. “Uh, strange, like someone was brushing against my insides, no, and no idea, sorry.”

He pauses, eyes narrowed in consideration. “I think they’ve stopped, though.”

Lizzy deflates with a disappointed sigh, smile still gleaming to rival the sun. “What a shame, I was just about to ask if I could feel for myself.”

Mac is endlessly grateful for Sam stepping in right then, because he feels his throat starting to close up again with the weight of what feels like the entire emotional spectrum at once. It’s a little surreal, having people to share this with; only three short weeks ago he hadn’t even told a single living soul about his pregnancy, and now he’s sitting here, with two incredible women who get excited about his babies’ first movement _with_ him.

“Let’s pencil that in for tonight, hmm? ‘Cause we have doctor’s appointment and some maternity clothes' shopping to get to, so you don’t have to keep making do with hair-ties to make your pants fit around your waist and sweatpants.” Lizzy crawls out of her seat with a nod of understanding, still grinning widely from ear to ear. She throws a glance at her watch and bends down to press a light kiss to Mac’s forehead, bumping her sister’s shoulder affectionately. “Sounds good to me, I need to prepare for my afternoon client anyways. Have fun, you two.” And then she’s back off into the house, leaving Mac and Sam by themselves.

She doesn’t say anything for a full minute, only stands there and lets him get his breathing back to a normal pace. Slowly, she drops to kneel in front of him, hands hovering over the skin of his belly, green eyes looking up at him in a silent question that Mac answers with a shaky nod.

It sends a stab of – not pain, but something damn close to it through him, feeling Sam’s callouses that first moment, because in the dark recesses of his brain he can’t help but hear the little voice that whispers how similar Jack’s hands would feel to hers. She’s trained on all the same weaponry as he is, after all, even if Sam hasn’t been in the game quite as long as Jack; but the progression of her career is eerily similar to his. Military, special forces division, CIA, Phoenix; if she liked punching people just a little more, she’d be scarily close to a female version of Jack. Then the slimness of her hands registers, and Mac shoves the thoughts aside. Jack’s hands would be much broader than Sam’s, and anyways she isn’t wearing any ridiculous Beowulf rings bought as a replacement for the one lost in Chernobyl.

“How are you feeling, Mac?”, she breaks the silence, her hands a grounding weight against his belly. He sniffles quietly, smile still in place despite the conflicting barrage of emotions. “I – god, Sam, I don’t even know”, he snorts, slowly un-clasping his hands from around his stomach, waiting for his friend to lift off as well before sliding his shirt back in place. He drags her cardigan across his tear-stained cheeks roughly. “I feel… I feel happy. Sad. A little scared. No, okay, a lot. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, but I love them so much already.”

Slowly, Sam rises back to her feet, extending her hand that Mac takes gratefully. Sitting down and getting up is already becoming an exercise more troublesome than he remembers running from active gunfire ever being, especially with how his feet have been acting up lately. “Honestly? I don’t think any new parent has the first clue about these things until they do them, at least that’s what my friends tell me. For now, we’re gonna go to the doctor’s and check out how those iron supplements have been working. And ask how long you’ll be up for extended travel.”

Mac’s groan of exertion tapers off into silence, left hand still clasped in Sam’s while his right digs into the small of his back for support. He gapes at her in open surprise, hurrying to catch up when she chuckles and starts off in direction of her car.

“You – wait, you mean you’ve managed to get us a secure jet?”, he calls out, having to concentrate a significant amount to keep his strides straight and even. Mac absolutely refuses to waddle until he hits at least the seven month mark, he straight up refuses. Bad enough that he already needs assistance in getting up.

Swinging the driver’s side door open, Sam turns around and gives him a bright grin, leaning against the roof with a small, one-armed shrug. “Of course, Mac, who do you think I am? I was near-fatally shot, not retired. Most of what I do these days is training or interrogations, but I’ve still got a favor or two to call in, which apparently includes a highly illegal, unregistered joy-ride to a covert agency in the States that isn’t technically supposed to even exist. All completely off the books, of course, no one except the pilot will even know where or who we are. And if we time it exactly right, ASIS won’t notice the jet was ever gone.”

Mac throws his head back, laughing in loud, giddy relief. For the first time since Jack left, he feels something that can almost be called genuine hope.

He rushes forward, throwing his arms around Sam and drawing her as closely against his body as the bump will allow. She has to fold herself over its swell a little awkwardly but returns his hug with equal ferocity.

“Thank you, Sam, thank you so much”, he whispers, eyes squeezed tightly shut against the wetness in his eyes. Her lips quirk into a smile against his ear, hands smoothing between his shoulder blades soothingly.

“I told you I’d get you home, didn’t I?”

* * *

For the umpteenth time that day, it’s all Jack can do to keep from losing his shit completely. It’s a near thing, though, and judging by how hard his grip was on the steering wheel on their drive here, he may not be so lucky at the next bombshell dropped on them.

He’s never actually seen this particular Phoenix location before, inside or outside, and would have gladly lived out the rest of his life that way. The only thing that keeps him from turning back around as him and Desi get buzzed through multiple stages of security is the thought of what this is for.

_Mac. Mac and our children._

“Oh, by the way”, Desi pipes up suddenly, extending her left arm over his chest to stop him in his tracks. “Before we go in there, just so you’re not surprised; there’s a second inmate, Nicholas Helman. And he’s very much alive.”

Jack lets his head drop back for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling with a growing sense of desperation. “For _fuck’s_ sake, does anything in this godforsaken world still make sense?!”

He’s not even really surprised that Helman is apparently alive – he doesn’t think he has it in him anymore. All he feels is that annoying sense of resignation like when you realize you have to go in the middle of a firefight or defusing a massive bomb.  
  
Desi chuckles, lowering her arm again to open the door and let Jack through. “My thoughts exactly. On the bright side, he doesn’t seem to be involved this time.”

God, Jack hopes to _fuck_ she didn’t just jinx them.

They pass the corridor between two spacey, grey cells without bothering to stop and gawk at the deceptively elderly gentleman sitting on the right hand-side. Jack can feel Helman’s gaze boring into their backs, but unless it somehow aids in finding the love of his life and bringing him back to safety, he is very decidedly uninterested in having a chat with any serial killers. Murdoc, unfortunately, falls exactly into that category.

Jack isn’t spared from that infuriating, teeth-grinding voice for even an instant of a second as soon as the door to the interrogation room opens and they step through. Creepy Crawly keeps greeting them with sing-song all the way through taking their seats, smiling like he’s just been given an unconditional release with a nice murder-vacation on top of it.

“What a won-der-ful sur-prise! Oh my, oh my, I can scarcely believe it – _the_ Jack Dalton, accompanied by _the_ Desiree Nguyen? Astounding!” Wordlessly, Jack returns the unsettling look, watching as the far too wide smile slowly fades from Murdoc’s face and the assassin cranes his neck to throw a confused glance at the door shut tightly behind them. “What, did I behave so badly I lost my Angus privileges?”

Jack’s hand twitches towards his thigh holster, kept in check only by his iron-clad self-control and divine intervention. The desire to put a bullet squarely between those dark brown eyes burns stronger than ever, and when he lays a tablet on the table between them instead of following his heart’s desires, he does so with heavy disappointment.  
  
While he unlocks the device, Desi answers coolly, sounding far more collected than Jack knows either of them really feel. “That’s none of your business. All you’re here to do is answer our questions.”

Murdoc _hmm’s_ thoughtfully, handcuffs rattling as he shifts in his seat. “You know, I hate to be a spoilsport, but I really don’t see why you should get to have all the fun. Figuratively, of course, your guard dog here seems a little tense – didn’t have a nice vacation, Jackie dear? You know, I hear – _oh,_ but what is _that?”_

His rambles cut off the moment Jack turns the tablet around for Murdoc to see, displaying a gruesome image of the Parisian crime scene that includes a clear shot of the unnamed hitman’s face. Jack patently refuses to think of him as a victim, not when he almost certainly tried to kill or at least hurt a pregnant Mac. Maybe even kidnap and do unspeakable things to him.

Murdoc swipes through the selection of images with an increasingly unsettling amount of glee in his face, brown eyes growing wide in excitement. When he looks back up at Jack and Desi, his pupils are dilated so wide it makes his eyes look pitch black.

“Now that”, he says, voice low and raspy, “is what I call entertainment. Lovely. Picturesque. Artistic. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.” And then he falls silent again, leaning back in his seat with all the ease in the world.

“Who is he?”, Jack asks, speaking up for the first time since entering the room. His voice is flat, the only alternative to the angry growl that wants to build in his chest, thrumming just under his skin along with all the tension in his body. Murdoc’s lips quirk into a secretive little smile, but he simply continues to look at them. Jack repeats his question. “Who is he?”

Murdoc shrugs noncommittally, jaw cracking wide open on a yawn. “Someone who’s dead now”, he muses, smile a self-satisfied, irking thing.

When Jack draws his gun and points it squarely between Murdoc’s eyes, he does so without a single twinge of emotion. Next to him, Desi jumps a little in surprise, cursing quietly. She doesn’t try to disarm him.

“Five seconds”, he tells a gobsmacked Murdoc, and flicks off the safety. “One, two, three-“

His finger is already curled on the trigger when Murdoc yelps out a panicked okay, breathing hard as Jack lowers the gun back down to table-height without re-holstering it. “For god’s- you people get worse every time you come down here!”, he hisses, staring between them indignantly. He looks a lot like an angry cat, Jack thinks distantly, relaxing his finger on the trigger. “Alright, I _do_ know him. Bulgarian hitman, goes by many names but I knew him as Damyan Lazarov, recruited him into my failed business venture, and then failed to kill him until someone apparently decided to be so nice and do it for me. There, happy?”

 _Anything but,_ Jack thinks, having to suppress the urge to plant one in Murdoc _. Worst case scenario officially confirmed, Mason does have people on Mac’s trail._

Outwards, he only nods, sliding the tablet back into his lap as Desi gets out her phone and taps out a message to who Jack presumes is Matty. He still keeps his gun lying on the table as a precaution, even if it fails to shut Murdoc up.  
  
“For god’s sake, you people really need to work on your hospitality. What on earth crawled up your ass and died there, huh? Because you’re giving me some very hostile vibes here, you know. First you don’t even let me talk to my bestie, then you interrogate me about some B-list assassin that kicked the bucket, and then you threaten to kill me – what is going on?!”

Jack is only half-listening to any of Murdoc’s rambling, waiting only for Desi’s sign to get back up and continue the search for Mac. He wonders distantly whether to expect a stern talking-to about his methods but decides fairly quickly that he doesn’t have it in him to care. Murdoc, on the other hand, keeps on demonstrating how much he cares by refusing to stop talking.

“You know, now that I think about it, Angus was very strange on his last visit here. Still foiled my escape, of course, but anything else would be disappointing, really. No, something _was_ off, very much so. I was a little focused on getting free at the time but his pallor didn’t look very healthy, and he seemed just a tad out of it altogether… kept fiddling with anything and everything, a nervous wreck, and the smell…” Sniffing demonstratively, Murdoc’s brows furrow in thought, and Jack feels his hackles go up when brown eyes swing over to rest on him in an intense stare for several seconds as something blooms across Murdoc’s face. “Almost… almost like…”

The assassin’s jaw drops, and he leans forward slowly, eyes fixed intently on Jack in a look of extremely unsettling wonder. The sound of Desi’s fingers on her phone keyboard tapers off slowly, but Jack can’t tear his eyes from Murdoc’s gaze. “Could it be… does dear Angus have a bun in the oven courtesy of you?”

Jack’s self-control rips as easily as a wet tissue, and he shoots out of his seat with a loud snarl, gun wrenched out of his hand immediately by Desi who grips his shoulders in restraint after. Murdoc jumps back with a delighted laugh, grinning like it’s Christmas and his birthday all at the same time.  
  
“Jack! Calm down, Dalton, if you kill him you’re only gonna make Matty angry and do fuck all to help Mac”, Desi hisses in his ear, barely even registering through the screaming rush of rage in Jack’s whole being. He’s breathing heavily, heart pounding-

“Well, then, that explains a lot”, Murdoc drawls, languidly as if Jack wasn’t rearing to end him only inches away. Desi’s grip tightens minutely, but he’s already starting to get himself back under control – somewhat, at least, as much as he can with his brain still swimming in adrenaline at a perceived threat to his mate posed by another alpha. “He’s nesting.”

Brought up short, Jack blinks at Murdoc, feeling the whiplash of his instincts brought to a screeching halt. His brain struggles to make any sense of the statement, mentally tallying through the litany of articles he spent last night reading through. “He – what?”

“You heard me, Dalton, he’s nesting”, Murdoc repeats, rolling his eyes as if Jack’s the weird one here. “Amber did it too, and quite intensely, might I add; I almost ended up just like poor Damyan there numerous times. She was very territorial, you know. I always said she got pregnancy cravings for blood.”

Shaking his head at the wistful smile on Murdoc’s face in abject disgust, Jack forces his shoulders to relax. “You don’t know shit, asshole. Mac’s not a fuckin’ monster.” _He’s only being hunted by one._

“Isn’t he, now? He certainly shows skill with a kitchen knife”, Murdoc retorts, wiggling his eyebrows playfully at them. Jack only grunts in reply, already turning around to get the hell out of dodge, lest he commit actual murder today.

“I’d hate to think of the alternative, because that’d mean that he had to defend himself against the likes of our dead friend all on his own, without you to back him up”, Murdoc calls out, stopping Jack dead in his tracks. “You don’t have a clue where he is, do you?”

Clenching his jaw so firmly he feels his teeth grinding together, Jack forces himself to concentrate on Desi’s death-grip on his arm. “You don’t know shit”, he repeats, voice rough and broken. Murdoc tuts disapprovingly, and Jack has to repeat his mantra of _don’t kill him, it won’t help Mac_ over and over.

“Aside from the fact that I take great offense to that statement, that changes things. You see, despite your atrocious hospitality and rather questionable temperament, I like to think of us as friends.” Jack snorts humorlessly, turning around to give Murdoc a pointed eyebrow. All it does is widen the smile on his face. “No, really! A time or two removed, so to speak. But I’m going to tell you something that may save Angus’ life, so listen carefully.” The smile fades from his face almost as quickly as it came, and against his better judgment, Jack feels a chill go down his spine.

“Damyan Lazarov was quite famous for a number of things, such as his brute strength and unrivalled ability to absolutely butcher a mark. But he also rarely worked alone and had an almost fixed employment with one notable individual.” Murdoc pauses, and shrugs helplessly. “Well, as much as you can, in this business.”

“Yeah, Elliot Mason, we been knew, Looney Tunes”, Jack retorts, shoulders sagging again. He’s almost relieved that they won’t get any new pieces of information that could possibly make this worse out of Murdoc.

Of course, that’s when the world decides to raise the stakes once again.

“No, Dalton”, Murdoc says quietly, “I don’t mean Elliot Mason, whoever that may be.”

Ice settling heavily in his gut, Jack exchanges an uneasy look with Desi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dunn-dunn-dunn!! so, what do we think, are things finally looking up for Mac? will murdoc make things better or worse? is helman involved after all???? so many questions!!! spoiler alert for the last one: no. no he is not. full transparency. that's a little convoluted even for me. leave ur thoughts in the comments, hugs nd kissies


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoop whoop here I am again!! back at it!! thank u for ur patience I love u all <33
> 
> a sidenote with some thoughts on Desi's characterisation on the show: I hate it. desi past s3 is reduced to mac's shitty love interest, and imo it's all a thinly veiled plot to push Mac and Riley by making her the very obvious bad guy and Riley the very obvious good guy. I don't have particularly strong opinions about either ship, but the whole pitting women against each other for a man's romantic attention... yikes. also I don't like love triangles so that plays into it. long story short, s3 desi is the desi I love and write; she's got some edges, a lot of them jagged, and sometimes she needs to spend an hour or two letting it all out in the gym, but she's not emotionally or otherwise abusive. 
> 
> anyways I hope u enjoy!! kudos and comments nourish me so if u leave one I might just blow air out through my nose really hard. jk I will legit smile it always gets a smile.

Over the course of his life, there have been very few moments Jack could point at and say, _that’s where I almost lost it. That’s when rage almost drove me to the brink of killing someone because I could, not because I was ordered to._

When he was twenty-three and just returned on leave from the Army, and his sixteen-year-old sister walked past him and his pops kicking back on the front porch, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as she shook like a leaf, reddish outlines of bruises starting to form around her wrists. She’d flinched away from his hand on her shoulder, and the next time Jack came across her PE teacher at the local drugstore, he’d punched out five of the bastard’s teeth with his first swing only.

Little Riley who’d frozen up when she dropped a glass of water in front of him, a year into his relationship with Diane, and tried to pick up the shards with her bare hands in a panic, crying incoherently into his chest and begging him not to lock her in the wardrobe, she’d be better.

The warehouse in Chechnya, where Jack’s team stumbled upon dozens of brutalized and almost unrecognizable bodies strung up on meat-hooks or laid out on the cold cement floor, and only realized upon a closer look that they were all children. One of them had curly black hair, limp and soaked with god-only-knows what.

Stalking out of the Phoenix black-site, Desi only half a step behind him, ears still ringing with Murdoc’s parting words.

His feet thump against the ground rhythmically, a staccato pound that echoes right along his rapid-fire heartbeat. He doesn’t acknowledge any of the guards on the way out, thinks that if he had to look another human being in the face right now, he wouldn’t be able to see anything but _his_ ugly sneer, that very same cold, cruel glint in grey eyes that he’d thought blown to pieces years ago. 

The cool outdoor air hits Jack’s skin like an icy wave, causing goosebumps to crawl down along the length of his spine. His entire frame still trembles with barely restrained rage, but by the time they’ve crossed the distance to the Phoenix-issued black van, he’s got enough presence of mind to hand the keys to Desi instead of chucking them at her. She seems surprised for a second, but wordlessly accepts them and gets into the driver’s seat while Jack turns off his phone and slides into the passenger side. He still slams the door a little too hard, takes a primal sort of satisfaction in the way it makes the whole car rattle.

Desi pulls out of the fenced-in prison area off onto a smooth forest road that leads straight down through a thick cover of maple trees. Absentmindedly, Jack watches the way they seem to dance in the wind, shivering and fluttering.

 _Funny how you can never see it clearly when you’re right beside them,_ he thinks, now starting to feel the dull pain in his thumb and forefinger where he clenched his fists so hard it had the delicate bones creaking. When he exhales again, he has to close his eyes momentarily to fight off a bout of lightheadedness, unclenching his jaw to stop his teeth from grinding together.

Exactly eight minutes after Desi started the car, he reaches across the console, offering his open palm. “Can I have your phone for a second?”

Silently, she takes her right hand off the wheel to drag it out of her jacket pocket, placing it squarely in Jack’s hand. “Twenty-seventy-three-zero-five”, she says, never once taking her eyes off the road.

Jack dips his head gratefully, unlocking her phone. “Thanks, Dez”, he murmurs, lifting it to his ear and turning his head to the front again. He looks straight ahead at the empty stretch of road, watching the leaves move in the wind until Matty picks up.

“Dalton here. We have a problem, Matty; the entire Kovacs taskforce is possibly compromised.”

* * *

“First degree…” _Small tear extending through the lining of the vagina-_

“Second degree…” _Most common type, extending both through the vaginal lining and tissue-_

“Third degree…” _Including vaginal lining, tissue and anal sphincter-_

“Fourth degree…” _Severe tear through the vaginal lining, tissue, anal sphincter and – rectal… lining-_

_Risks include long term discomfort, fecal incontinence and severe pain…_

Snapping his book shut decisively, Mac stares into empty space for several long, horrified seconds. His inner eye is bombarded by gruesome images of cut flesh and gore, a pair of surgical scissors slicing through a dashed black line exactly like the one depicted in his textbook-

“That”, he declares decisively, blinking at the kitchen cabinets on the opposite side of the room, “Is absolutely horrifying.” _And about high time to call it a day for reading up on what to expect during childbirth_ , he thinks with a shiver, perineum tingling in vivid phantom-sensations. Mac squirms on top of the cool marble countertop of Sam’s kitchen, setting his book aside carefully before looking down at his bump with a critical gaze, hands coming up to frame its swell gently. He remembers when it was still barely more than a slope, easily passed off as bloating or simply weight gain.

“You know, there’s very few things daddy’s ever gonna ask of you, munchkins – but this is one of them. Please, for the love of god, don’t make them give me an episiotomy”, he pleads, thumbs stroking softly across the soft, cream-colored cotton of the newest addition to his (quite literally) ever-growing wardrobe.

To his left, Sam snorts out a quiet huff of laughter, stirring her patented feel-good tomato sauce that Mac still hasn’t quite figured out after three plus weeks. She flashes him a lopsided grin, tucking a thin strand of blonde hair that’s escaped her braid behind her ear. “That sounds better with every chapter.”

Pulling his shoulders up to his ears against the instinctive shiver that wracks through his body once more, Mac winces. God, he needs to stop thinking about forceps and scissors in places they shouldn’t rightly be, otherwise he’s never going to taste any of those spaghetti. “Honestly, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the mechanics of childbirth, but every time I think it can’t get more horrifying, I turn a page and am surprised once again.”

 _And in four months or less, you’ll have to do it twice over,_ he thinks, releasing a harsh breath to try and combat the dizziness starting to take hold of him.

Mac doesn’t realize Sam’s moved until she’s standing right in front of him, pink lips moving soundlessly with her thick eyebrows drawn into a worried frown that creases the light skin of her forehead

“…with me, Mac? Yeah, just like that, very good”, Sam’s voice suddenly picks up again, the thin fog of panic in his mind dissolving far more slowly than it’d taken hold of him. The rough feeling of her flannel registers against his sweaty palm, followed by her skin against the back of it, and when his eyes flick down, he sees that she’s holding his hand to her chest to feel its even rise and fall. He blinks again, realizes that he’s matching his own breathing to hers already. The rushing sound in his ears is starting to fade, and one by one outside sensations start to trickle in again. The ceramic counter underneath his thighs. An ever-present ache in his joints. A heavy weight on his middle.

Sam’s green eyes scan his face thoughtfully, and whatever she sees has her lips pulling into a small smile of relief. She squeezes Mac’s hand softly, still keeping it pressed to her chest. He’s grateful for the gesture, still half-focused on the grounding sensation of her heart beating faintly underneath her sternum.

“Good, just keep breathing, nice and slow”, she says, voice kept low and calm. “Do you want to talk about what happened there, Mac?”

He closes his eyes for a moment, inhales shakily, and leans back against the wooden cabinets. When he opens them again, she’s still standing there, firm and patient. “I – sorry, I just… got overwhelmed, for a second. It’s… it’s a lot.” He shrugs, helpless in finding the right words to describe exactly what his insides feel like. Stressed. Terrified. Like he’s building two humans from scratch.

Sam tilts her head thoughtfully, thumb stroking across the back of Mac’s hand. He’s grateful for the physical grounding technique, along with everything else she’s done for him. “You can say that, yeah. If it’s too much, you could always read the brochures the doctor gave you instead, I’m sure they make for a more positive reading experience.”

With a low sigh, Mac lets his lips twitch into a smile. This is territory he’s comfortable with; debating and relaying information, optimizing research. It’s certainly better than thinking about the-procedure-that-shall-not-be-named again, which is really entirely too many of them.   
“Already did, that’s why I started on the textbook. I need to be prepared and know everything there is to about giving birth.” _Just in case._

With a small smile, she lets him withdraw her hand, stepping back to her spot in front of the stove and turning the heat back on. Involuntary heat blooms in his cheeks when he realizes that he’d completely forgotten about the sauce; but then again, there’s a reason for all the fire extinguishers Bozer kept in their house.

“Being prepared isn’t wrong, I’ll give you that”, she admits, giving the red mass a quick stir before shaking out the spoon and pointing it straight at Mac. He thinks that it might even look intimidating if not for the chunks of tomato skin and basil still hanging off it. “But you’ll be delivering in the safety of a hospital at home with a team of professionals that have done this a hundred times before, and if – _if_ – they decide something like an episiotomy is necessary, it will be done properly. Or you might just get a Cesarean in the first place, so.”

Mac snorts, smile slowly fading off his face. He leans his head against Sam’s kitchen cabinets, feels its solidness against the back of his skull, hard surface against hard surface. “Yeah, and that scares me too.”

His hands twist into the hem of his shirt restlessly, brushing against the firmness underneath. _Funny what the human body can get used to_ , he thinks. _Even breathing feels different like this._

“I – I miss him.” Eyeing the stretch of his shirt across his stomach, he swallows thickly, hands stilling as they curl against its bottom. “I miss Jack.”

He tilts his head in Sam’s general direction, unable to raise his eyes to meet her gaze. He’ll lose it again immediately if he does. “It’s been months since I even just talked to him, and – this would just be so much easier with him.”

Sam reaches forward, curling her fingers around his again in that same easy grip that’s brought him out of more than a few nightmares over the last few weeks. When he isn’t being woken by the constant pressure on his bladder or lower back, Mac seems to be unable to escape any of his worries even at night – Mason finding him, miscarrying, Jack not wanting them, Jack dy-

“I know”, she says softly, squeezing at the ridge of his palm between his thumb and the first knuckle of his index finger. “But you won’t have to do this on your own much longer, Mac. Just two more weeks.”

 _Yeah, two more weeks,_ he thinks, and blows out a heavy breath. A tear slips out over his left cheek, wiped away almost immediately with the soft material of his shirt. Mac drags it across his eyes too for good measure, hand clenching tightly around Sam’s. “I’m sorry, this is – it’s ridiculous. I miss him so much and now… now I’m crying because I might see him again.” He huffs in exasperation, eyes flicking up for the smallest of moments to meet Sam’s piercing green gaze before they drop again, but all she does is chuckle softly. “Is it? I think it’s good that you’re talking about it, instead of bottling it all up again.”

Straightening out his spine against the slight twinge of discomfort in his lower back, Mac lowers his free hand to massage at it gently. “Yeah, well, don’t think I could even if I tried. There’s just…”, teeth worrying at his bottom lip, he struggles to find the words to adequately describe the sheer mayhem of his emotions. “…so _much_. Of everything.”

They stay like that for several moments, the only sounds between them the soft humming of the stove and blubbering of the sauce, until Sam gradually releases her grip on his hand, crossing her arms in front of her torso in his peripheral vision.

When she breaks the not-silence again, Mac finds himself looking up at her as if on autopilot, hands falling on top of his thigh and the cool kitchen counter limply. “Mac, I know that you’re worried about Jack’s reaction, and everyone else’s, but… I’m here for you, either way. And maybe it won’t go as badly as you think.”

Hasn’t _gone as badly as I think,_ Mac adds mentally, holding Sam’s gaze silently as he thinks back to his friends and family at the Phoenix. They’ve got to know by now; if all else has failed, then at the very least that his doctor must’ve alerted someone when he didn’t return from his supposed vacation. HIPAA or not, he can’t imagine that Riley could’ve resisted hacking into his medical records after that. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Desi calling Jack from there, to imagine someone possibly having found the ultrasound already, Jack giving them the identities only he knows about, finding the body in Paris and the book he left-

Well. When all is said and done, Mac knows it’d be nothing short of naïve to expect a return to open arms. Not only did he hide his pregnancy from them, he ran away and murdered a man in cold blood.

_Is that really someone whose children Jack wants to raise? Or would he not care either way because it was in self-defense?_

“I just don’t want to trap him into something he doesn’t want.” It rushes out in one fast breath, leaving an uncomfortably empty feeling in Mac’s chest along with painful tightness at the same time. Scared of doing it without Jack, scared of doing it with him, scared of being rejected; there’s no winning here.

“And I get why you’re afraid of that, I understand that it’s a complicated situation. Just… make sure you don’t push him away either”, Sam answers gently, and Mac forgets how to breathe for a full moment, eyes wide and panicked as he fights to process her words. It’s not something he’s ever really considered before; that Jack could _want_ this with him, that maybe what he really meant by _I love you, Angus_ was _I love you, Angus._

He can’t get a read on the look in her eyes, or on his own thoughts. Mac feels like a jumbled, anxious mess, a gnarled-up ball of half-finished strings of thoughts that all tangle into a knot he doesn’t know where to begin undoing again.

Sam stands beside him patiently, letting him process for several seconds before she throws a sideways glance at the old-fashioned clock that hangs just next to the fridge to her right. Almost seven o’clock, Mac notes.

“Why don’t you go set the table? Lizzy will be here any minute now, and I can put on the pasta”, she requests, shooting him a small smile of understanding when he immediately slides off the counter, grabbing the plates and cutlery already set out on the opposite side. It’s not his most graceful landing, but then again, what can you do with a belly the size of a watermelon.

Mac takes much longer than strictly necessary with setting up the dinner table, getting lost in Sam’s words and his own thoughts as he fiddles with the forks and knives absentmindedly. He eyes the wall on the opposite side of the room thoughtfully, a nice, neutral beige, with a picture of an adolescent Sam and Lizzy and their parents on the front porch hung on it. Both of them are dead now, he knows, leaving only the sisters themselves. No aunts, uncles or cousins either.

Their house looks more like something Mac would expect to find in a farm – _Mama Dalton’s farm_ , a tiny sliver of his masochistic mind whispers – than in two well-off psychologists’ homes, if that’s what one can call what Sam does at work. It’s cozy and well-worn, built with a lot of light wood and earthy colors. So very unlike his own ragtag, scorch-marked LA home.

_Home._

He sets down the last plate slowly, staring down at the table. His eyes won’t seem to focus on the dark wooden material, not as a thousand different

thoughts shoot past his conscious focus all at once. It’s not that Sam said anything particularly shocking, but… something about her wording really drove home, deep into that raw space inside Mac’s chest that recoiled and surged up all at once as soon as she’d implied that maybe, just maybe, Jack wouldn’t reject him. Maybe he’d want him. Them.

Mac realizes that out of all the many scenarios that have literally kept him awake at night for the past five months, sweating and crying in a terrified crumple of a person, he’s never seriously pictured what it would be like if Jack wanted to _be with_ Mac and raise their children together. Or even considered it a possibility at all. He’s swung wildly between everything from rejection to death to a pity-family, each of them heartbreaking in their own way. When Jack hadn’t picked up that last call, Mac had taken it as a decisive sign to lose any and all hope for a relationship between them immediately. It had been necessary, even, to find the strength to leave it all behind, because that way he could tell himself that he was only making right call for everyone.

Except that he didn’t, because in two weeks he’s going back home after all.

Placing shaky palms onto the flat expense of the table, Mac’s eyes trace the arch of his thumbnail as it scratches across the dark wood.

Did _I make the right call for everyone? Or just for me?_

“Mac?”

Heart beating frantically inside his chest, Mac flinches as his head jerks up, staring at a newly returned Lizzy in the doorway. She’s eyeing him thoughtfully, with a piercing green gaze that makes her look eerily like her sister, and Mac feel like the worst operative in covert ops history. He only belatedly realizes that he didn’t even hear her come in through the front door, or announce her presence like she always does, or catch the way his fingers clench onto the edge of the table in a death grip. “Everything alright?”

“Oh, uh – yeah”, he stammers, forcibly unclamping his fingers from the table to smooth along his stomach absentmindedly instead. He tries for a shaky smile, can feel even as he pulls the corners of his mouth upwards that it misses by several miles. “Yea- yes, just… thinking.”

Lizzy hums thoughtfully, arms crossed loosely in front of her abdomen, and Mac has to resist the urge to rub at his eyes for how strong the resemblance stands out. “Wanna talk about it?”

Mac hesitates, making a soft sound in the back of his throat as he stills his hands against his bump; Lizzy’s voice is gentle and kind, and he recognizes it for the offer it is, not the demand it could be. A part of him wants to keep talking about it, wants to never stop talking about it, cover every square inch of the issue until he’s dissected it to the point of certainty; but then a much larger part of him feels raw and vulnerable still with the freshness of his realization, and wants nothing but to curl up and sleep for a dozen hours before he even entertains the thought again. In the end, his exhaustion wins out.

“No, not really”, Mac murmurs, filled with intense relief when she only smiles faintly in understanding. A moment of silence passes between them, and then Lizzy suddenly uncrosses her arms, holding out her left hand in his direction.   
“Apple? You forgot it on the bench this morning.”

Mac blinks rapidly, caught off guard by the rapid change in subject and mood, when the kitchen door is shouldered open by Sam carrying a steaming pot whose mouth-watering smell reaches all the way across the room before she even crosses it. “Welcome back, Lizzy, and no, it’s dinner time”, she calls out over her shoulder, smiling indulgently to herself when her sister pushes herself off the doorframe and skips past her all the way around the table to Mac’s side.

“Well, _Rebecca_ , he’s eating for three so dinner rules don’t apply to him – isn’t that right, darlings?”, she coos, bending down to bring herself at eye-level with Mac’s bump. His gaze jumps between Sam sliding into her seat at the table, grinning up at him from behind the confirmed heavenly bowl of pasta, and Lizzy making high-pitched kissing noises at his stomach, still holding out that apple – “Well, actually that’s not quite true, daily caloric intake for the second trimester of a twin pregnancy only increases by about 680 calories-“

He tapers off slowly as Lizzy straightens up, still fixing him with a piercing look and an added raised eyebrow. “Soo-o – you _don’t_ want the apple?”

Mac sneaks another look at the pasta. And then he snatches the apple from Lizzy’s hand, immediately taking a huge, crunchy bite out of it, sliding into his seat opposite a sniggering Sam at the same time.

Swallowing around the bite of sweet, tangy fruit, the small quirk of Mac’s lips comes much easier this time, as Lizzy plops down into her own seat at the head of the table unceremoniously.

 _Maybe things aren’t that clear-cut after all, he thinks,_ holding out his plate for his helping of dinner. _Maybe they will be okay._

* * *

_Why do things have to go to a new degree of shit every time we make some kind of progress?_

_Why did any of this ever even happen in the first place?_

Once again, Riley has nothing but questions, answers she doesn’t want, and a growing sense of cold foreboding spreading in the pit of her stomach. She stalks through the Phoenix corridors as fast as her heels will allow, taking two steps at once when she reaches the stair well on her level. Her hands feel jittery and sweaty, and her entire body thrums with nervous energy.

When the transparent glass panes of the war room finally come into her sight, Riley stops short for a moment, hesitating as she takes a long, hard look at its occupants. She’s peeking just past the corner of the corridor wall where she knows that they won’t see her unless they really look.

It’s just Jack and Matty inside at the moment. Bozer and Leanna should be somewhere above the Atlantic right about now, and she honestly has no clue where Desi could be hiding. Getting them all a caffeine refill, maybe. Working out her anger and pain in the gym, more likely.

Jack paces the length of the room restlessly, visibly agitated even from this distance. He gestures wildly with his hands in uneven intervals, pressing them against his head as if he means to pull at hair that’s little more than buzzed stubble at the moment. Riley’s no expert at lipreading, but the way he sinks down into one of the brown leather armchairs and buries his face in his hands tells her all she needs to know. From her vantage point, she can’t see anything but the back of Matty’s head, but she’s known the other woman long enough to be able to picture her exact expression. It looks a lot like her own feels.

With a low sigh of exhaustion, Riley jolts herself into motion. She has no idea whether her news will make things better or worse, but with how things are going she doesn’t know whether it’ll even make a difference either way. Looking forward, she can’t see anything but more of the same murky uncertainty and looming danger.

_One foot in front of the other, Davis. One foot in front of the other._

She pushes the door open and exchanges a small nod with Matty, before turning her attention back to Jack, whose head whips around as soon as he hears her enter. He looks even worse up close, eyes bloodshot and swollen, and much paler than she ever remembers seeing him except for that mission in Ecuador.

Reaching into the back-pocket of her pants, she tugs out his phone and holds it out between them, stepping forward to meet him halfway where he’s shot out of his seat. “Here you go, good to use again”, she says softly, watching as he analyzes it from every side, every corner, even squinting into the charging port before he lets his hands sink slowly, still clutching onto his phone. “Did you find anything?”

Jack’s voice sounds every bit as rough and broken as he looks, like he’s been screaming (or crying) himself hoarse for the past few hours. Riley’s chest clenches painfully, and she pushes out a small sigh as she shakes her head.

“No, nothing at all. And I ran multiple tests, multiple times, with multiple programs. Turned everything off and on again to make sure. I found absolutely no sign of spy- or malware, nothing that shouldn’t have been where it was, no holes in the firewalls I installed. However Kovacs found out about Mac, it wasn’t through you.”

He closes his eyes momentarily, tilting his head backwards as he releases a long, heavy breath. Riley can see the sheer effort Jack is putting towards not breaking down right then and there, lips pressed into a thin, quivering white line. When he blinks heavy lids back open again, the sheer amount of devastation in his dark brown eyes sends cold shivers down her spine. “I shoulda seen this comin’.”

Dragging the back of his hand across his eyes harshly, he sinks down onto the back of the armchair he’d just gotten out of slowly, eyes fixed on a random spot on the floor beside Riley’s heeled boot. “I shoulda – goddamn, how could I be so blind?! This whole thing stunk to high heaven from the first damn minute! We spent five months with nothing but completely fuckin’ useless intel, and no one ever questioned where that picture came from in the first damn place-“

“Well”, Riley cuts in through Jack’s nervous spiral, already squeezing between armchairs and reaching for her rig still lying on the coffee table, sinking into the cushions of the one Jack occupies, “I think I might be able to help with that.”

She hears more than sees Jack turn around, leaning down close over her shoulder as she opens the screen and pulls up the grainy image stored in the cloud, Matty moving in close to her right. “I ran a search for the phone number that sent it to you five months ago and came up with only a shell corporation registered in Nebraska.” She’d needed something to occupy her while waiting for her program to do its work, after all. And if Riley’s being honest, she’s been itching to get her hands on this mystery ever since she first heard of it in the hopes of keeping Jack from leaving. But when she’d asked Matty about it that first and last time, all she’d gotten was a sad shake of her head and a vague explanation about the mission being classified even for her, and the Army and CIA keeping everything tightly under wraps.

“Another shell company and a bit of magic, aaand…” Pressing a quick combination of keys, she leans back and gestures broadly at the driver’s license on her screen. “Ta-da. Michael Brown, better known as –“

“– Elliot Mason”, Matty finishes her sentence, leaning in to get a closer look at hauntingly familiar grey eyes over Riley’s knee. His gaze is cold and empty even through pixels, sending her skin crawling with memories of seeing Charlie fall to his death in that elevator. She’s come across a lot of bad people in her life, but even inside supermax Riley’s never seen anyone who’s looked and felt as dead as Mason does.

Turning to stare up at Riley and Jack behind her shoulder, Matty repeats herself once more, as if she still can’t quite believe her words. “Mason sent you that picture of Kovacs, which means – “

“ – that either he’s really good at throwing red herrings, or they’re working together”, Riley continues, nails drumming restlessly against the bare sliver of thigh that shows through her ripped jeans. “I think it’s the second one, and I also think that Jack’s right about the taskforce being compromised. Plus, it would explain why only Mac has been targeted; if it was just Kovacs, it would make a lot more sense for him to come after me, or at least both of us.”

The weight of Jack’s hand on her shoulder comes as a surprise, but not a threat; even Riley herself is surprised at the lack of reaction or automated reflex from her body, not even the slightest twitch in her shoulder or neck. He squeezes protectively, a familiar warmth she feels even through the material of her T-shirt, and as she leans back to press the back of her skull against his forearm, Riley realizes with a start that she’s never had that problem with Jack. Not after she’d met him as a child, and finally let him in; not freshly out of prison where even a door closing a tad too loudly had made her jump. She’s always trusted Jack, even when she didn’t necessarily like him.

“Those bastards got us right where they wanted”, he growls, leaning in close over Riley’s shoulder. “Divided and conquered; they got me out of the way and cleared the biggest hurdle between them and Mac. Nothin’ else makes sense, Kovacs would make me watch and kill all of you at once, not make his life harder and expose himself to every intelligence agency that would love his head on a platter again. You’re onto somethin’, baby girl.”

It’s a testament to how crazy her life has become in recent years that the mention of being murdered violently in front of Jack along with all their friends doesn’t even make her blink, eliciting only a faint feeling of distaste before she moves on to focus on the situation at hand, namely the last item on her checklist of news to deliver.

“One last thing, Matty”, she says, setting her fingers back to her keyboard and pulling up a new file that’s full of screenshots of security camera footage, all of them featuring the same two cloaked figures, one of them noticeably larger and broader than the other. “That list of Mac’s movements in Paris you asked me to compile – I did, and noticed something strange. In the span of his first week there, Mac met up with the same single person three different times. I got lucky and managed to clean up a shot of his face in one of the meetings, and I think he might be able to tell us something about where Mac went, or at least as who he went.”

Touching her hand lightly to Riley’s right arm, the same side as where Jack’s hand is still squeezing at her shoulder gently, Matty gives her a wide smile. “Good, get me everything you know about him, a name and address if possible. Outstanding work, Riley.”

Her arm still tingles along with her chest when Matty lets go of her again, stepping back and walking to the front of the room as she gets out her phone. Riley has to work at tamping down on the tiny smile of pride that wants to spread across her face, still not quite used to this praise of her more unconventional skillset after all these years, when once it landed her in prison.

“Bozer and Leanna have a tac team with them, I’ll dispatch them to that man’s location instead and have them take him in for questioning”, Matty announces, looking up from where she’s typing out something on her phone to fix her stern gaze on Jack. “In the meantime, do you still have the old paper mission file on Kovacs? I don’t want to alert anyone by hacking into the digital one via Riley.”

“The, uh, old file that I would technically be committing treason by still having in my possession instead of destroying it more than ten years ago?” Slowly, Riley turns around, looking up at Jack behind her, wearing a very suspicious expression of mock-innocence that reminds her of when her mom got home early from work and found the two of them trying frantically to keep her from entering the kitchen and discovering their little play-doh accident. “…yup. Still got it.”

She huffs out an amused snort, turning back to face Matty who points at Jack approvingly. “Atta boy. Now go get it for me.”

The leather creaks with the shift of his weight off the back of the armchair, and then his hand is gone from her shoulder as well, leaving a distinct sense of coolness in place of his palm. “Yes ma’am!”

Riley’s attention is already back on her rig and her assignment from Matty, paying no heed to the sounds of what’s presumably Jack opening the door and leaving to get his file, when she hears those damning six words.

“When did we arrest Russ Taylor?”

Her fingers still against her keyboard, and for one long moment she sits stock still just staring at her rig. Slowly, she raises her gaze, up to where Matty is pinching the bridge of her nose, turns around – and sees Jack’s back, Desi standing just off to the side, gaping like a fish at Russ next to her, who is leisurely bringing his hands to his front from where they’d been clasped behind his back, showing off his wrists to Jack, bare of anything but a Rolex and cream-colored suit-sleeves. “Uh… you didn’t, actually.”

Jack turns around, eyebrows raised, an unreadable expression on his face. Riley finds herself inching further into her seat, suddenly grateful that she has the back of an armchair to hide behind. “We didn’t?”

The unspoken _‘What the hell is he doing here, then?’_ hangs heavily between them, and Riley’s heartbeat pounds in her ears. She simultaneously wishes she were anywhere but here and had a bag of popcorn, a feeling Desi’s wide eyes and frantic look she exchanges with Riley echo vividly.

Matty sighs behind her, audibly exasperated with the situation. “No, we did not. Jack, meet our new boss.”

“New – “ He whirls around, gaping at the outstretched hand in front of him and the man offering it with a slightly awkward smile. “Russ Taylor, I own the Phoenix. Nice to meet you, Agent Dalton, I’ve heard a lot about you from your teammates.” He buries his left hand in the pocket of his cream dress pants.

Jack doesn’t make a single twitch for almost a full ten seconds, and suddenly Riley wishes she had a better view of his face which is no doubt priceless. _Shame we’re not allowed any cameras in the war room itself, only a full frontal would do it justice._

Just as Russ’ smile is starting to look decidedly pained, Jack releases a heavy breath and grasps his hand somewhat roughly, shaking it twice before he lets go again. “Alright, what the hell. Why not. Helman’s alive, Russ Taylor owns the Phoenix, and I’m gonna go get those files for the boss lady, nice to meet you.” And then he brushes past Russ him a quick clap to his shoulder, shaking his head the whole way past the still very much visible war room.

Riley’s head turns as if in slow-motion, along with Desi’s, to watch their boss stare awkwardly into the space vacated by Jack only moments ago. He tilts his head, rolls back the shoulder that’d just been clapped, and shrugs. “Well, that was interesting. Anyways. Desiree briefed me on the way here.”

And that’s Matty’s cue to shift gears back into mission mode seamlessly, as if whatever that was didn’t just happen in front of their very eyes. “Good, then you’re more or less up to date. We think Kovacs and Mason are working together and have infiltrated the taskforce, with the exception of your people.”

Nodding as he fishes his own phone from his suit-jacket, Russ is already halfway back out the door, only pausing to dial someone’s number and exchange parting words with Matty. “We’re thinking along similar lines, then. I’ll contact my agents, have them keep out an eye and give us a full rundown of the entire taskforce to add to Dalton’s own reports. Will that suffice for you?”

“That’s lovely, thank you very much, Russ”, she smiles, and with a last, absent-minded, “Always, Matilda”, he’s gone again.

Matty steps up besides Riley’s armchair, left thumb hovering over the call icon of Bozer’s contact in her phone. “Alright, Riley, get me that location. I’m going to coordinate on the taskforce with Taylor, and you and Desi keep down the fort here. Call me when Jack gets back.”

And then she’s gone too, leaving only Riley and Desi in the war room together.

The dim thud of Desi’s boots against the wooden floor has Riley turning to her left, just in time to catch the other woman sliding into place over the armrest, right leg wedged halfway between Riley’s thigh and the chair and halfway onto her thigh, a firm line of heat that tingles against her skin even through both of their layers. She doesn’t fail to notice the fact that there are three other readily available seats that the beta could’ve chosen, and yet here she is.

“That – what even was that!”, Desi whisper-screams, and when Riley looks up at her she finds rose-colored lips twitching into a grin that has her own mouth pulling wide across her face before she even realizes. “Arrested? He thought we _arrested_ Taylor?!”

Body convulsing on a giggle, Riley shifts, heart jumping helplessly in her chest when the motion only presses her closer against Desi. She has to crane her neck to still be able to hold her gaze at this angle, pronouncing the height difference between them that doesn’t usually come into play, what with her love for heels. It’s the only explanation she can come up with for why her eyes keep dropping down along Desi’s face.

“I’m just waiting for Bozer to hear about it, he’ll never let Jack live that down”, she snorts, noticing how Desi leans her right arm over the back of the chair, behind Riley’s back. An imitation of a hug.

_For god’s sake, you just slept in the same bed the whole night, get it together! Even if nothing happened. Except for when your foot touched her shin. And you looked at each other before falling asleep. And-_

“Yeah, you’re right about that”, she says, and then some of the brightness of Desi’s smile fades from her face. “What’s the sitrep on that, anyways?”

Clearing her throat, Riley blinks herself back into focus. _Right. Terrorists trying to kill one of your best friends._

“Well”, she hedges, turning back towards her laptop and bracing her left arm on top of Desi’s jeans-clad thigh, trying hard not to look down in sheer nervousness as she pulls up the program tracking Bozer and Leanna’s flight. “We’re just waiting for them to touch down and get to the crime scene, which should give us some new leads. ETA four hours, plus some. City traffic and all.”

Desi doesn’t say anything for several seconds, but Riley can feel the almost-weight of her body hovering just above her own shoulder. She’s leaning much closer than either Jack or Matty did, much closer than she needs to, really.

“Alright”, she finally says, and then the proximity of her warmth lessens a little, leaving a strange tingling sensation in Riley’s back. “Anything I can do until then?”

Turning around slowly, Riley looks up at her dark brown eyes. She’s masking it well, but the stress lines carved into her forehead and the depth of emotion in her eyes tells Riley everything she needs to know. Plus, she’d like to think she has a fairly good grasp on how Desi works at this point. Not having anything to do is killing her.

“Maybe get us some more coffee, and keep me company?”, she says softly, still feeling the weight of her own arm on Desi’s thigh. “It gets lonely, sometimes. And I’d really appreciate the distraction. Keeps me sane.”

Dipping her head in understanding, Desi smiles faintly. It’s a genuine one, Riley can tell, if only by the way it makes her stomach flutter; small and a little fragile, but all the more precious for it. “You got it, Riles. Coffee and company, coming right up.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....I am just going to leave this here :)

_Los Angeles, USA_

_Now_

Jack doesn’t know what he expected this conversation to grant him. Peace of mind, maybe, or closure. But it takes him nearly ten whole minutes to even start talking.

“Hey.” His voice is rough and scratchy with sleep deprivation, eyes bloodshot with heat in the early morning breeze. This part of LA is refreshingly quiet, surrounded by a protective layer of greenery that reminds Jack of Texas in late spring. Hands fidgeting uncertainly for a moment, he finally settles on burying them in the pockets of his leather jacket as he shifts in place and eyes the small bundle of daisies he’d picked on the way here. Jack hadn’t known what else to bring; at least he’s putting some thought and honesty into it this way.

He clears his throat, exhaling shakily. “Sorry I didn’t come to visit earlier, hoss. Been a little hectic around here.” He receives no answer, but he doesn’t expect one, considering he’s talking to a name on a headstone and even if the man is listening, it’s from someplace far away. Someplace light and good, hopefully, just like this cemetery on a warm December morning, where tragedies and bloody vendettas can no longer reach their friend.

 _Charles Robinson,_ the simple grey stone reads. _07.08.1984 – 25.09.2018_. _A day of duty done, a day of rest begun._

Heaviness settles beneath Jack’s sternum, and even the melodious chirp of birds and rustling of the wind seems to sound from faraway. The sun warming his skin doesn’t seem to be able to truly reach him, as if there was a disconnect between his body and his self. He bites down harshly on his bottom lip, basks in the sharp sting of pain for a few heartbeats before he releases it again. “God, Charlie, I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

The epithet on the headstone is a beautiful one, as far as epithets go, something Jack might even have considered for himself; but all it does right then is drive home the point of how far off it really is with painful clarity once again. Charlie Robinson did not die in the line of duty. He died in the line of a random man’s personal grudge against another random man.

“I remember when we first met, in Kabul”, Jack mumbles, smiling softly through the suspicious burn in his eyes. The gravestone gives no indication of its attention, but he keeps talking anyways. It’s all in the believing. “Got right up in my face and told me to keep my hard-ass wannabe tough guy attitude to myself, that if I messed with the kid again, you’d make sure I wished for a bomb to look at instead of the latrines. You knew I was a trained Delta

operative from the get-go, but that didn’t stop you. Not when it came to protecting your friend.” _To protecting Mac._

The muscles holding up Jack’s smile start to weaken gradually, one by one until the alpha finds he can no longer hold it. Fingers twisting together in his pockets, Jack sighs deeply, bowing his head towards the grave. “I wish I coulda done a job halfway as good as you, Charlie.”

It’s part of the reason why Jack’s even here in the first place – after the initial bout of discoveries and progress, their homerun dried out almost immediately again. Mac’s contact in Paris had been discovered as a decomposing corpse by the tac team, shot in the head days before. And Bozer and Leanna’s apartment-sweep yielded next to nothing; nothing but a small picture book hidden in the same place as Bozer said the ultrasound had been in Mac’s bedroom. The phone wedged between its pages had seemed promising enough at first, until they plugged it into a laptop mirrored on Riley’s own rig and turned it on, forced to watch as a remotely uploaded virus immediately destroyed everything on it. The only thing his baby girl managed to salvage was her own tech – thank god – and a few odd messages, all of which were useless garbage out of context. Jack has never before in his life yearned for some doors to kick down quite this desperately, not even when Murdoc had kidnapped Mac; but the fact of the matter is that they’ve got less than nothing to go on, apart from the two Spearhead agents still on the taskforce. And as Matty and Taylor proved less than willing to lose that ace quite yet, Jack’s been little more than a glorified animal pacing in its cage for the past two weeks.

“You know, I think you woulda made a great godfather to one of the kids”, Jack breathes out, head tipping back as he blinks out into the open air. “I know Mac would’ve thought so. I wish – I wish you could’ve met them. I wish I could.”

The admission drives all the breath from Jack’s body, even after weeks of having known and lived this waking nightmare. Every day he wakes up it gets harder than before, weighs down his limbs with another mental image of all the gruesome ways Tiberius Kovacs or Elliott Mason could be torturing Mac right now. His only consolation is the fact that neither of them would be able to resist gloating if they did catch up to the omega, and so each day that Jack goes without any news on his partner is another day of conflicting relief and panic.

He swallows thickly as he stares at the lifeless grey slab in front of him, mind empty of whatever else he was meaning to say. It’s not a problem he’s ever had when talking to his dad’s headstone, but what else _can_ Jack say? Charlie Robinson is dead and gone.

Suddenly, he can’t take it anymore, leans forward to press a clammy palm to the edge of the grave one last time and squeeze as he murmurs a choked-up apology into the quiet morning air. Jack turns sharply, shoulders hunching forward and spine a rigid line of thrumming tension as he takes off through the row of graves towards the gravelly main path that leads back to his car.

He pants harshly as he stalks down towards the brass front gate, deeply and viscerally grateful for how deserted the cemetery seems this early in the morning. It’s not that Jack has a problem with showing emotion or even crying in front of others, no matter how many times he’s thrown out a joking _Deltas don’t cry, dawg_ to his partner over the years, but with this, even the brief and impersonal scrutiny of a stranger feels too close to bear.

At the last intersection in front of the gate, his steps taper off into a slow halt. Jack can still feel the tear-tracks drying uncomfortably against his cheeks, but the blur of pastel blue and lush green that is the world blinks back into focus when he turns his head to the right to stare down at the path that branches off into another part of the cemetery. He knows where it leads, wouldn’t even have to think about where to go for his feet to take him there; but something keeps him rooted to the spot, has him clenching his teeth until the dull, grinding pain snakes up along his jaw into his temples.   
  
Jack hasn’t gone to see his father yet, not since he’s gotten back from the Kovacs mission. He’d driven up to the cemetery gates and parked his car and then sat in it like a weirdo for almost a full hour more than once, but even the slow walk to Charlie’s grave had felt excruciating. He can’t even really bear to think about what it would be like to see his pops again, with the knowledge of everything going on.   
  
Jack Dalton Sr. had been an amazing father, the best in the world – how can Jack face him like this? When Mac’s lost somewhere in the world, being hunted every minute of every day? Maybe even thinking that Jack doesn’t love him or their children?

He can’t. He just can’t.

A soft buzz in the back pocket of his jeans jars him out of his reveries, and Jack’s fingers fumble clumsily out of his leather jacket. His skin tears against the metal zipper with how fast he whips it out, but the pain is so minimal it doesn’t even register on his scale anymore. A message from Matty blinks up at him from the screen of his phone, with a summons to the war room – the burst of hope in the depths of his chest is small, but hurts all the worse for it, because it’s still there. And Jack knows that chances are great he’ll inevitably burn himself on it when he gets there and discovers another way to be utterly useless at helping Mac out of the danger he’s in.

“Now, boy, stop it with the negative talkin’”, he murmurs thickly to himself, starting back down towards his car. Heaving a deep sigh, he throws one last look over his shoulder in the direction he knows Jack Sr.’s grave to be, and nods twice in silent acknowledgment for both his father and Charlie.

When Jack rolls back out of the parking lot and onto the main street, watching the brass gates fade from his rearview, he promises himself that the next time he comes back, it’ll be with Mac in tow. Nothing less than that.

* * *

_Bunbury, Australia_

_Eight hours ago_

Mac can’t remember the last time he had a restful night’s sleep. He’s caught in that strange state between sleep and consciousness, where he’s so tired that every waking moment feels grating and slightly surreal, but so strung out that closing his eyes and shutting out any external noise only ramps up the one inside his own head tenfold.

At least the weather is nice, he supposes, if a little windy.

The sturdy wooden bench he’s reclining on isn’t technically part of the Jones’ backyard, but close enough; placed on a gentle incline only a few dozen yards away from the fence that sections off the peaceful cul-de-sac, a cobbled path leads straight to it from their property. Behind his back, Mac knows, are the sparsely spaced-out trees of a forest. A lovely walk for the days where he feels up to it – today, he decidedly does not.

The ever-increasing weight on his middle makes it difficult to get comfortable in any position, but for now, the firmness of the wood at least seems to alleviate his back pain to a bearable level. He can feel his feet tingling with the exertion of just walking the few short steps up the tiny slope, sparing a passing thought of yearning to his days of daily morning jogs that are now decidedly a thing of the past. Not for the first time, he wonders with a nervously twisting stomach what the following couple of months will bring; how quickly he’ll recover from labor, the ensuing childcare, how he’s going to raise the twins in his and Bozer’s house…

The thought of Jack always hovers just somewhere close enough to reach, and far away enough to loom. It’s probably inevitable, considering that in only another short hour Mac will be on a flight to LA with only Sam and his own nerves for company. It’s also the reason why he’s out here in the first place – he doesn’t want to say his friend kicked him out, exactly, but there was certainly some insistent shooing involved, and the claim that he ‘hovers’ and ‘stares too sadly for her to concentrate on travel preparations’, like a poor little puppy that needs to be constantly watched lest it start taking apart your kitchen appliances or try to help with anything.   
  
Drawing a soothing circular motion into the cotton-covered expanse of his belly, a tiny smile pulls at the corners of Mac’s mouth, entirely against his better judgement. “The further along you two get, the more I wonder what you’ll be like”, he speaks into the not-quite empty air, voice at a regular volume instead of a self-conscious whisper as it had been the first few times he’d done this. It took some getting used to, but Mac finds it comforting to talk to his bump – his children – like this, even if there’s no one around to hear. The thought that they might on some subconscious, visceral level, be processing his voice…  
  
Well. It has his heart skipping a beat even now.   
  
“Sam thinks you’ll be a right pair of little rascals”, he admits softly, grinning in amusement to himself and the rusty hose at the back of Sam and Lizzy’s house that they’ve refused to let him fix. It’s almost possible to forget his bone-deep exhaustion like this, too; his limbs still ache, but the fog in his mind seems a little less stifling. “I would say you can’t be worse than I was as a child, but I’m too scared of jinxing it to take that chance.” An almost involuntary laugh bubbles up from deep in his chest, and Mac thinks back to long days in Mission City with Bozer, grandpa and Archimedes. “One time I set my dad’s toolshed on fire when I was seven. I don’t really remember what I was trying to do, if I’m honest, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident. Gonna have to childproof the house pretty thoroughly if I want to survive your chaotic toddler years.”

Mac dips his head back on a fond sigh, feels his shoulders droop with instinctive exhaustion as soon as his eyes fall closed. Something hot and heavy all at once pulses across his entire body, settling in his head where it seems to bounce off the inside of his skull. _Thunk,_ it goes, another _thunk_ , another pound for every sleepless night he’s had to endure-

He almost loses the soft whistle to the natural background noise of the woods and his own drumming heartbeat, writes it off as quietly tweeting birds all around; but Mac’s spent too many hours camping out in the wild not to be able to distinguish a human whistle from a bird’s, and when he blinks his eyes open sluggishly, his suspicions are confirmed when he immediately catches sight of Sam leaning her left hip against the fence, waiting patiently.

“Want some help?”, she calls out, fingers picking at the aged wood. Mac almost considers taking her offer for a moment, but then decides to awkwardly shuffle over to the bench’s corner instead. No point making her come up here just to help him up, and anyways this has nothing to do with his pride.   
  
He heaves himself out of his seat with a low wheeze, left hand braced on the back of the bench as he wills his aching knees to take the weight suddenly shifted forward. Picking his way over the gnarled roots peeking out from the ground, Mac blinks away the faint spots of vertigo dancing in front of his eyes and tries hard to ignore the swooping of his stomach that has little to do with the side-effects of pregnancy.

Even his deliberately slow pace doesn’t make for a particularly long return to Sam’s backyard, who’s already holding the small, rickety gate open for him to step through. “You know, I could’ve fixed that very easily”, he notes, for what must’ve been the thousandth time in the past few weeks, throwing a considering glance at the metal hinge that squeaks and screeches for all its worth.

Sam only huffs out a small breath of laughter, letting him slide his hand into the crook of her elbow as she guides them back through the lush green lawn. “So you’ve said, and Lizzy’s put motor oil on her shopping list for next week already”, she replies, lips crooked into the same lopsided, exasperated grin she always wears when trying to explain to him why he’s not going to bend over, carry any heavy objects, go near hazardous materials, fix anything around the house…   
  
_Or be useful,_ a low, ugly voice whispers in the back of his head, less easily tuned out in the already messy jumble of emotions. Mac does his best to concentrate on Sam’s familiar presence – until they round the corner, and he catches sight of the Mercedes in the driveway, prepped to take them straight to the private airstrip.

The tiniest stumble in his step, but the only indication Sam gives that she’s felt it is a gentle squeeze to the fingers clenched tightly around her elbow. Swallowing thickly, Mac squeezes back, clenching his left hand loosely against his stomach that suddenly feels even more noticeable than before. He can feel his eyes watering, against the bite of the wind that’s suddenly a lot more noticeable.  
  
They come to a halt just past the front porch, both watching with matching smiles as the door is thrown open and Lizzy bustles through, all bright chatter and brown hair sticking out of her bun. She clears all three steps with one big jump, and Mac realizes that he’s really, genuinely, _badly_ going to miss her, a hole in his chest already starting to form.

“Now, I know you can’t take me to whatever super-secret spy location you’re going to”, she declares, woolen cardigan billowing out around her form with the force of the wind. Mac shivers minutely against the thin fleece jacket drawn around his own frame, eyes darting over to the outline of Sam’s car before they jump back to Lizzy. “And usually I hate goodbyes, but…”   
  
Between one blink and the next, Mac finds himself enveloped in her arms, an embrace that smells of lavender and detergent and somehow manages to fit tightly against him despite the awkwardness of his pregnant belly between them and does more to soothe his frayed nerves than anything else has over the past months. He sags into it with a small noise, wrapping his left arm around her back to clench trembling fingers into the scratchy material of her cardigan, lets Lizzy hold him for far longer than strictly necessary as she rocks them gently from side to side.   
“…but I think I can make an exception just this once”, she finishes softly, smiling up at Mac as she leans back and drags the back of her sleeve across reddened eyes. He laughs out a sharp, shaky breath, feels the tell-tale slide of tears down his cheeks and the sudden gratefulness that he isn’t the only one crying, that this means something to them too.   
  
“Thank you, so much”, he whispers, choked up and unable to say anything else that doesn’t feel inadequate. Lizzy only chuckles softly, adjusts herself to crowd up against his free side and wrap her hands around his elbow in a mimicry of what he’s doing with Sam, butting her head against his shoulder affectionately. “Nothing to thank us for, Mac”, she insists, and when Mac turns his head to look down at her, he finds only open conviction in her green eyes.

A heartbeat of silence passes, and he turns to face the front again, chest shaking with a deep breath as he steels himself to move. Sam is the first to go, gently tugging him forward, and Mac suddenly feels dizzy with the realization that this is it; this silver convertible in front of him is his direct line home to Jack. He doesn’t even notice the loose strands of hair whipping across his forehead over the drumbeat of his heart.

“You’ll take good care of him, right, Becca?”, Lizzy says suddenly, as they all take another step forward together. Another, Sam’s tinkling laughter of a response. “Of course, who do you think I am?”, she teases, and Mac can’t help the smile that blooms across his face, even if his eyes remain fixed on the car. Only another dozen steps, and he’ll be one step closer to Ja-

The wind changes its direction, blowing straight into their faces, and suddenly Mac feels his smile melt into nothingness. The quiet back-and-forth of the sisters’ loving bickering fades in the background as Mac’s brows draw into a frown. There’s something… something sharp, and pungent, something that doesn’t belong here – chemical…

_Chlorate?_

Mac’s body screeches to an immediate halt, left arm shooting out across Lizzy’s chest who stops alongside him, making a soft noise of surprise. Sam immediately follows his lead, head whipping around in his peripheral vision as she quietly calls his name in an obvious question. But Mac stays silent, still staring at the car in front of them intently while the wheels of his mind start to turn and piece something together. He takes another deep whiff, nose twitching with the sharpness of the smell now. But why-

Realization hits Mac all at once in a flash of remembrance, faint recollections of the desert and worn brick walls, hastily-assembled devices he’d spent years dismantling even after leaving the army, a wave of deafening, white-hot pressure followed by a billowing wall of flame and high-pitched ringing. His eyes widen, he opens his mouth to-  
  


* * *

_Los Angeles, USA_

_Now_

Desi gets the call two hours and forty-six minutes after it happens; or rather, Riley gets it, and Desi just so happens to catch the melodious ringing tone of her work cell going off a few seconds before the other woman stirs awake beside her with a low groan. Pushing herself off the mattress with a mechanical routine reminiscent of her Ranger years, she gropes around the nightstand to turn on Riley’s bedside lamps, listening to her do the same on her own side of the bed in search of her phone.

Desi eases herself against the fabric headboard and lets the back of her skull sink against its firmness, eyes already fluttering closed again. Late night calls with emergency requests or time-sensitive tasks are actually fairly routine for Riley, as she’s discovered in the past few months of increasing sleepovers. It’s not that she’s on call every single night, but definitely on more than she isn’t; her rig always stays plugged in on the drawer right beside her bed for easy access. And yet, even with the occasional interruptions, Desi hasn’t felt as rested anywhere else as she does sleeping with Riley. Sleeping _next_ to Riley. With a platonic distance of at least two feet between them.

God, she’s not awake enough to have these thoughts yet.

“Davis?”, the omega’s sleep-thick voice murmurs, sheets rustling faintly with movement. Desi flexes her hands atop the thick material and lets herself float in that disconnected space between wakefulness and interrupted sleep, her thoughts only half-finished as she listens to the faint crackling of someone’s voice on the other end of the phone. Riley makes a faint grunt of attentiveness, _hmm_ -ing and _yeah_ -ing along to what’s being said to her, until she suddenly goes quiet and even the comforting background noise of her breathing cuts out. _“Shit”,_ she hisses with feeling, and then she’s throwing her the blanket back at the exact same moment as Desi, squeezing out a curt promise to be in the war room as soon as possible before she cuts the call and drops her phone onto her nightstand.

“What’s going on?”, Desi asks, curt and professional, not a trace of sleepiness left in her frame as she slips from the mattress and turns to face Riley, whose arms are half-raised in an aborted nervous gesture, hands clenching uselessly in the empty air while her gaze flickers through her bedroom before coming to a halt on Desi. “Uh, Taylor”, she says, head turning from side to side and eyes narrowing, most of her attention somewhere else. “Needs me at the Phoenix, attack on the Kovacs taskforce-“  
  
 _“Shit”,_ Desi seconds, imbued with the same intensity as Riley’s curse only moments ago, and makes a split-second plan. She whirls around and throws open the wardrobe’s doors, grabbing the first pair of jeans she sees and chucks them over her shoulder. Riley’s already stepping out of her sweats when she turns around, but the flicker of something in the back of her mind is lost to the professionalism of things going tits-up. Pointing at the solid oak drawer behind her friend who’s climbing into her pants, black hair sticking out of her French braid every which way, Desi undoes the strings to her own sweats. “Get your tech, I’ll handle the rest. Food and bras and shit are for later, sounds like we’re on a clock.”

Riley’s apartment is at least a forty-minute-drive from the Phoenix; Desi makes it in twenty-two. Had she tried cutting as many corners during the day, she would’ve been arrested within the first five minutes, but the road remains thankfully almost entirely empty. Riley sways along with the momentum of the car, fingers flying over her keyboard with a speed and accuracy that would frankly be impressive even in complete stillness. When Desi says as much, she only snorts, and explains that Jack’s evasive driving under heavy fire certainly helps practice.

When they pull into the Phoenix parking lot, Taylor and Webber’s cars are already there, and both of them are perfectly dressed in crisp business casual, though Desi suspects that as she remembers seeing them looking the exact same a few hours ago, they never went to sleep in the first place, and tries not to feel too out of place in her own rumpled band-tee that belongs to Riley and smells of her own clean sweat.

They pile into the war room, and despite the brief flash of surprise in Russ’ eyes, Matty doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at Desi’s presence, only nods at her to frost over the windows and hands off her tablet to Riley, instructing her to keep an eye on the Phoenix team re-routed to Krakòw on their exfil. Riley sinks into an armchair, tablet clasped in her left hand while she opens a Spearhead file on her rig with her right, and Desi takes her place behind her. The big screen is filled with a grey concrete wall, and at her questioning glance Russ sighs.   
  
“Temple and Moran were attacked by the rest of the squad”, he explains, looking uncharacteristically frazzled with his shirt half-untucked and hair coming loose of its gelled shape. “Three captured, one shot fatally in the skirmish. But Moran’s-“  
  
“-throwing up blood now, the idiot needs a hospital”, a woman’s voice answers, tinny and raspy, followed by a face that appears on the screen. Agent Temple is an almost delicate-looking, attractive dark-skinned woman, if it weren’t for the obvious bulk of muscle in her shoulders and the messiness of her bun, her split bottom lip and almost swollen-shut right eye. Her breathing sounds wheezy and labored, and Desi can make out the beginnings of bruising on her throat. “How far out are those reinforcements? I can’t leave the moles alone for that long.”

The following hours pass altogether too quickly; Temple does her best to keep her partner alive with field-first-aid as Russ talks her through it – unlucky couple of potshots, Desi gathers, plus a concussion. Riley vanishes into the labs as soon as the team arrives to get Moran into professional care and hook up the dirty agents’ phones to their own tablets that she has remote access to. She lets Desi bully her into fresh clothes, some crackers and hydration, but the frustrating truth of the matter is that there’s almost nothing else for her to do. Desi’s skillset isn’t needed at a computer, and Riley shouldn’t have to deal with distractions while she does her thing, so she slinks back up into the war room and takes up her usual corner, trying not to feel too useless. She’s had plenty of practice over the past few months anyways.

The tension brimming beneath her skin that always gathers in her knuckles doesn’t fade for the rest of the night, stays there well into morning. She listens to Matty and Russ debate the merits of extracting the taskforce to LA or travelling there in person, take calls from Polish officials, and asks herself over and over again, _why now?_ They’d had a plan in motion, she’s almost completely certain of that. A plan to get at Kovacs and Mason through the taskforce, much like Riley is trying to do right now. But still, it leaves a curdled feeling in her stomach, a sour taste in the back of her throat that tells her that there’s more to this.

She clenches her fingers into a tight fist and tries not to think of the empty, hunted look on Mac’s face in the days before he’d left. Of the frenzy in Riley’s kind brown eyes when she’d jumped off that bed hours ago.

Daylight creeps up on all of them almost completely unnoticed, until Desi suddenly turns around and blinks against the natural light illuminating the scenery outside and spilling into the war room. It stings in her eyes, almost glaring after so much time pacing underneath an artificial glow, throwing strange shadows against the now empty screen. Agent Temple had signed off for some sleep about twenty minutes ago, with thirty more stitches in her than she’d started the day with. She’d done so from a rickety chair in a Polish ICU, and Desi had to fight the urge to clench her jaw and look away, plagued by images of pregnancies gone wrong and lead unloaded into the back of an unsuspecting blond head.

A soft call of her name gets her attention, and when Desi’s head whips up to face the front again, she’s met by Matty’s concerned gaze that seems to see entirely too much for her comfort. For the umpteenth time that day, she has to fight her instincts, squares her shoulders back in lieu of curling in on herself protectively. God, as if her sensibilities are even a ping on their problem-radar.   
  
“The others should be here any minute now”, Matty explains, rounding the coffee table and leather armchairs. On the other side of the room, Russ speaks into his phone in quiet, decisive tones, bits and pieces of protective detail instructions floating over to them. Of course, the two agents left with his own. The rest of them get to play prisoner escort – Desi finds herself envying them the job.

She nods curtly, crossing her arms behind her back to pull against the hem of her burgundy shirt she’d pilfered from her go-bag in the lockers. She doesn’t say that they should’ve called sooner, the moment they had the news, because she knows it’s pointless – only more people loitering about and crowding the place up, just like her. The only reason Desi is even standing here is because she was there when Riley got the call.

Matty’s gaze is piercing, and it almost reminds her of when the woman had beat her at her own stupid game and stuck that note to her forehead, but with none of the light-hearted teasing. “I know this is taking a toll on you and Jack especially, but hold tight", she says, with a quiet assurance that she carries everywhere with herself, that makes people believe in her words without choice. "I have a feeling you’ll get your turn soon enough.”  
  
Desi doesn’t know what to say to that, and she’s saved from having to find something by the door being pushed open, the rest of their team rushing in like a dogpile of overexcited, trigger-happy puppies. Or maybe that’s just Jack, reflecting Desi’s own tension back at her; Bozer and Leanna look a little more put together, but then again, they probably win the functional adult prize of their fold. Riley’s hair is still strewn all over the place, wilder than when Desi had last seen her, as if she’d been tugging at it.

“I managed to track Kovacs’ burner phone”, she announces, without any prompting from either their bosses or forewarning, and the reaction is instantaneous. Russ cuts his call without another word, Bozer whips around and stares at her with wide eyes, and Jack – Jack makes a noise Desi hasn’t heard him make since he got shot squarely in the chest during their time together in the Sandbox, grabbing Riley’s shoulders in his hands with frenzied reverence and more than a little confusion. “You – you _what now?!_ Is something going on? What the hell did we miss? How long have you been here? How?!”

Riley grins at him softly, pride flickering across her face and through Desi’s chest, and then she’s sliding into her usual armchair. “Long story short”, Matty says, moving back to the front of the room to stand next to Russ, “The other four members of the taskforce tried to kill our agents last night. One of them is in the ICU, the other’s a little worse for wear. One casualty, three prisoners.”

“Holy crap”, Bozer breathes, just about summing up Desi’s general emotional state and process of thought in one exclamation. Jack’s fingers curl around the back of Riley’s armchair, leather creaking with the force of his grip. His face has gone white and bloodless, and Desi knows right then that he’s thinking the same thing as her.   
  
They weren’t found out, but Mac might have been.

The big screen lights up with a mirrored image of Riley’s rig, showing a large map of the world with a blinking red dot placed squarely on the coast of –

“Australia?”, she murmurs, eyebrows furrowed, in a quiet chorus of confused mutterings. Riley’s fingers clack over her keyboard, and it zooms in, onto what seems to be a stretch of road surrounded by mostly greenery and gas stations.

“They pulled some phones from the attackers, and I pulled something from those”, she explains, leaning back and pointing at the blinking red dot on the screen. “I almost lost it to another virus, but I learn from my mistakes. It hasn’t moved in about five hours and that’s a highway a few miles out from Perth, so I think it’s safe to say that they probably tossed it. But kill instructions definitely came from Kovacs, I ran a voice recognition program on a call to the dead guy’s phone fifteen minutes before they jumped Temple and Moran.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Desi sees Jack slowly opening his mouth, inhaling a sharp breath as if he’s going to say something but isn’t entirely sure what. But Taylor’s smooth, British tang interrupts him. “Say that again.”

His eyebrows are drawn up in a small frown, a calculating glint in his eyes that has something cold growing in Desi’s stomach. She has no earthly idea what’s going on but knows already that she doesn’t like it. Riley sounds uncertain, trying to puzzle the same mystery together as Desi. “That… the kill order came from… Kovacs?”

Russ is already shaking his head, pacing and turning in half-aborted steps as he stares at the ground in front of him, burning figurative holes into it with the intensity of his thinking. “No, no, before that – “, he entreats, and Riley sounds less certain with every word she says. “He, uh, tossed his burner?”  
  
“In Perth?”, Bozer adds on, and for some reason, that seems to be the magic words, because Russ whirls around and breaks out into a manic grin, pointing straight at Bozer. “Yes!”, he hisses, and Desi feels her mouth dropping open in abject confusion. A quick look to her left reveals Matty’s stony expression, like she’s following a train of thought none of them are privy to and dislikes it immensely. Straightening back up into a semblance of professionalism, Russ clears his throat and continues in a triumphant voice. “Outstanding, Wilt, outstanding. Riley, would you be a dear and look up a Spearhead file for me? If I’m not mistaken, you should find it under the moniker REC-47-1. You’ve got full admin privileges, don’t worry about that.”

“I do?”, Riley questions with a practically audible raise of her eyebrows, echoed by Matty’s slightly more incredulous, “She does?” But her fingers are already back to flying over her keyboard, and Russ doesn’t deign them with a response apart from a non-committal shrug, purposely avoiding Matty’s gaze that definitely reads a lack of prior knowledge of this fact. And then a personal file appears on the screen, and the room goes still once again.

 _Rebecca Jones_ , the name reads, alias _Samantha Cage_ , a slender blonde woman with the most intense green eyes Desi has ever seen even through a screen, her skin light and gently freckled, thin rosy lips quirked into a half-smirk that almost has her questioning whether this could be Mac’s long lost twin sister. But then Desi skims the lines of the file and reads _Perth, Australia_ as her place of birth, and has the odd sense of coming to a realization whose shape she can’t quite make out yet.

“Where the hell did you get this from?!”, Matty demands, her voice pure steel, and Russ repeats his helpless half-shrug. “Not even the damn CIA or Phoenix have that amount of information saved permanently on her, for god’s sake!”

“What can I say”, the man deflects, turning himself away from Matty’s piercing gaze and paying intense attention to the file, “SAS did, and I like to keep an eye on recruits or enemies. Miss Cage once scored potentially quite high on both of those lists, so I dug.” Matty harrumphs, evidently dissatisfied with the whole concept as a whole, though whether that’s because he knew more than they did or due to protective friendly instincts set off by a mercenary company having this much on someone she obviously knows, Desi can’t tell. And anyways, it’s not the point, because he’s already pointing at a line in the top half of the document again. “There, current address in Bunbury, where she lives together with her sister. Could you show us any security footage in that area from about eight hours ago, Riley?”

Riley nods wordlessly as Desi leans forward, still frowning at the image of Samantha – _Rebecca?_ – when Bozer seems to notice her confusion. “We used to work with her”, he explains, fingertips drumming nervously against his palms as he leans towards Leanna almost unconsciously. “A little more than a year before you joined, probably, until Murdoc shot her near-fatally and she went back to Australia. Wait, wait, you’re saying-“  
  
“Exactly that, yes”, Riley interrupts, “because the only camera in the area that had a clear shot of her house stopped transmitting suddenly about eight hours ago.”  
  
Jack, who’s stayed deathly silent up until now, stumbles backwards with a punched-out noise of something between shock and rage and devastation all at once, hands flying up to fist loosely against the side of his head that he’s shaking in hopeless disbelief. “No”, he moans, fingertips digging into the skin of his scalp, “No, no, no, please, we couldn’t have missed that, we couldn’t have missed _Cage-_ “

Desi almost reaches out to him, wraps her hands around his wrists and tells him to breathe with her, keep it together, but things are happening too fast, and Riley’s frantically shifting in her seat as camera feed appears on the screen, of a regular sky-blue suburban house with a front porch and a silver four-seat parked in the open gravel driveway, capturing what seems to be its left side.

“But the feed saves to a cloud automatically”, she squeezes out, hits the touchpad of her rig, and starts the video.

For several long seconds, they all just stare at the same unchanged scene with bated breath, the only sound in the room Jack’s harsh, rhythmic exhales and the pounding of Desi’s heart in her ears, the rush of blood through her veins. It all makes sense, that’s the horrible part, if she’s interpreting this correctly, Mac _could_ have sought protection with a former coworker, someone he trusts implicitly, but how on earth could they _have missed it?_ Everything in Desi wants to scream that they _didn’t_ , until two indistinct figures step into the screen and in front of the house and she realizes that they did.

Jack rounds the chairs within a fraction of a second, crowding up to the side of the screen with his left arm half-raised in a shaky reach, a broken gasp tearing from his mouth. Desi’s eyes jump between them frantically, and the people are almost too small and far away to really tell but they’re both blonde and one of them definitely has a massive baby bump – _twins, six months, Australia_ her mind screams – until they turn their backs and she can no longer squint at the grainy faces and try to parse whether she knows the cut of that jaw, the color of those eyes. The door flies open and a third person rushes through, a woman by the looks of her, maybe Cage’s sister, and then she’s throwing her arms around the slightly taller figure.   
  
Even Desi physically recoils and has to tamp down on an involuntary noise, suddenly painfully aware that Mac is somewhere out there, physical and real and touchable, and they’re looking right at him for the first time in half a year. She doesn’t dare say anything, does her utmost to stay rooted to her spot, but the tear-tracks on Jack’s face almost prove to be her breaking point.

The third woman swings herself over to Mac’s other side, but when they turn towards the car his bump is still visible. God, it’s so prominent, even on the shitty security footage, Desi wants to scream – wants to give into the burn in her eyes that she can’t tear away from it. How big was he when he fought off that hired killer? How much longer can he keep doing any of this? How badly have they failed him?

Suddenly, they come to a stop on the screen, only a few feet away from the sleek silver car, Mac’s left arm thrown in front of Cage’s sister. Desi can’t make out his expressions or even face from here, but she knows instinctively that something horrible is about to happen as they scramble and turn to run, Mac’s movements frantic but slow. And then the car explodes.

She watches with cold, unfiltered horror as the three figures on screen are thrown to the ground, how Mac lands on his side and curls around his stomach even in his fall. Jack’s scream pierces the air around them, the unsettling stillness and absence of sound that Desi suddenly finds herself missing, the heat that doesn’t lick across her skin. She can’t move, she can’t think, Riley’s rig clatters to the table and she shoots out of her seat, Jack is pacing in front of the screen –

Mac isn’t moving.

Mac is just lying there curled into a ball on the screen, and everything rushes back in on Desi’s awareness in one fast go, hands flying up to cover her mouth, Bozer’s voice in the background crying out his best friend’s name. She slides between the armchairs and past the table, not even registering the sharp pain in her shin when she crashes into it, feels the vibrations of her own voice in her throat and its reverberation through her skull, but couldn’t for the life of her tell what she’s saying or screaming, maybe Mac, _Mac Mac Mac get up Mac-_

Desi blinks and Mac is heaving himself up on his knees, driving all the breath from her body and almost taking her legs out from under her, hands shaking against the sides of her head. She can hear Jack moan out a sob, an indistinct garbled cry of a plea, but something almost like hope spreads in her chest when she watches Mac and Cage and her sister slowly wobble to their feet as they grasp at each other. Visibly disoriented but no-

Out of nowhere, Mac and Cage’s sister drop back down to the ground as she seemingly half-tackles him and half-falls, Cage flinching next to them before she draws a gun from the back of her jeans and opens fire, and Desi realizes what just happened as Jack’s second scream cuts her to the core.

She thinks she hears Bozer and Riley too, hears a frantic _no_ , hears a shaking tear-filled _Mac,_ hears Jack scream please no god no, not like this, his hand pounding against the screen as if he could stop what played out eight hours ago half a world away.

“Wait, no – no, look”, she babbles, or maybe Riley does, but Desi can feel her mouth moving, eyes torn wide. She’s strung-out and wild, bouncing on the balls of her feet as the shapes on the ground move again, staring as if the intensity of her attention is going to lend them even an ounce of her strength, doesn’t even dare to blink for fear of missing something. “ _Look,_ he’s got her arm over his shoulder, he’s helping her, he’s okay – _he’s okay!”_  
  
Desi has never been so glad that someone was shot in her life.

“Oh my god”, Jack whimpers, half-sagged against the screen. Mac and Cage’s sister stumble back towards the house’s porch, scrambling for cover behind the wooden front stairs, covered by Cage herself. Cage, who fires off one more, two more shots, Desi traces the recoil that goes through her arms, Mac’s blond hair vanishes-

And the screen goes black.

 _He made it to cover,_ Desi thinks, takes a single step backwards that turns into another. _He made it to cover. He made it to cover. He made it to-_

Did he make it after that?

Something brushes past her legs, makes her jump and turn, and she realizes that it was Matty who rushed towards Jack, rocking back and forth on his knees, breathing far too hard and far too fast, wheezing in his chest. He’s blinking furiously at the screen, mouth opening and closing repeatedly, and Desi honestly thinks that if she tried to touch him right then he might just break her arm.

“Jack”, Matty calls out softly, like she had for Desi what feels like half a lifetime ago. Ten minutes at most, actually. Her knees are already buckling with exhaustion, but her heart hammers so fast against the inside of her ribcage she thinks she could run all the way from here to Australia and shoot Tiberius Kovacs in the head herself.

“Jack”, someone calls out again, Riley this time, falling to her knees behind him too, hand hovering above his spine but smart enough not to touch. Her voice hitches and cracks on a hiccupping sob. “Jack, _please-_ “

He flinches, groaning deep from his chest. Every part of Jack shakes like a leaf, trembles and vibrates. Matty says something, too low for Desi to catch, and she sweeps a disoriented glance over her the back of the war room that she suddenly remembers exists, Riley’s rig abandoned on the table, Leanna’s arms wrapped tightly around Bozer with a wide, unblinking stare, and even Taylor has to brace himself against the frosted glass panes of the room.

“…not your fault, Jack”, Matty’s voice picks up again, and Desi turns her head, stares numbly at where Jack is shaking his frantically, eyes wild and unseeing. Or at least not them. He’s mumbling something to himself, lips shaping the same syllables over again, hands clenching on top of his thighs. The helplessness on Riley’s face makes her sick, sick to her stomach and everything else, and Desi wishes desperately that she was better at this, or that her mother’s Vietnamese lullabies could fix a fuck-up this colossal.

 _“Jack”,_ Matty says, sharply, and it seems to work where gentle and reassuring didn’t, whips his head around until his full attention is on her. “Jack, I know how horrible this is, but please, I need you with me! I’m so sorry”, her voice cracks, and that alone blurs Desi’s vision with a fresh wave of tears, the depth of emotion she’s never heard or seen from this woman before, even when her ex-husband almost got himself killed and her blacklisted. “I’m so sorry, but you can’t break apart now. I need you on a flight to Perth, and I need you to go get Mac, protect him. Can you do that, Jack? Please?”

The whole room seems to hold their collective breath, only Riley’s chest hitching faintly with a silent contraction, watching Jack watch Matty. He blinks sluggishly, and then his brown eyes seem to clear up, head dipping in a slow, careful nod. He pauses, and nods again, with more conviction this time. “Yeah”, he rasps, voice scratchy and broken on his screams. “Yeah, yeah – you’re right. Okay. I’m with you. Yeah.”

He stumbles to his feet, as disoriented as a newborn foal, like he has to think about what to do with his limbs, half held up by Riley. He snakes his left arm across her shoulder, draws her tightly against his side, and she goes readily to muffle another sob in his chest.

“Good”, Matty says, and turns back to face the whole room. Desi can see how she steels herself, pulls her emotions into a tiny box and closes it as tightly as she can, swallowing back the last instinctive wave of tears. “Jet, now. You’re going to Perth.”


End file.
